


If You're Blinded By Beauty, Does Ugly Make You See Better?

by Drakey



Series: The Fantastic Spider-Man [1]
Category: Fantastic Four, Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: A Seriously Unfortunate Number of Love Triangles, Ben Parker Lives, Journalism, Love Triangles, M/M, Secret Identity, Super Teams, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-01-21 07:31:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 42,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12452607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: "What's the pettiest thing you've ever done to someone you love?""I spent about a week pretending I'd forgotten Spider-Man's secret identity once."Peter nearly dropped his five hundred dollar camera at Johnny's declaration. The interviewer chuckled. "Not what I meant by someone you love," she said.Johnny rolled his eyes. "I know what you meant.""So you and Spider-Man are dating?" she asked.Johnny smirked at Peter. "I think he knows how I feel."(An Uncle-Ben-Lives AU where Peter knows exactly what he wants and he's going to get it if Ben and May don't make him stay home to do homework)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The opening scene of this fic contains a scene in which Luke Cage scolds a police officer who shot him while he was apprehending a criminal. While Mister Cage is, of course, just fine, this is because he is a superhuman. 
> 
> Police violence against Black people is a serious problem in and out of the United States, and members of the Black community face dangers that many white people don't understand or willfully ignore.
> 
> The good news is that you can help. At https://blacklivesmatter.com/take-action/ you can find a nearby chapter, make a donation, or just keep up to date.

Peter stopped short when he saw the lights of the police cruisers flashing against the rainy streets in front of his neighborhood grocery store. A familiar pickup truck sat in the parking lot, dark windows broken by a bullet hole. He broke into a run in his red-and-blue costume, feeling the rain soak him as he splashed through puddles and vaulted over a car that honked and nearly veered off the road. 

A pair of cops turned towards him, and one of them pulled his gun loose. A spike of warning shot through Peter and he dropped to his knees and threw his hands up. He had nearly forgotten about his mask, and he let the cops approach. One of them pulled his mask off. 

"Is he okay?" Peter gasped. "Uncle Ben. Is he okay?"

The cops looked back and forth between each other. One of them sighed and said "What's your name?"

"Parker," Peter blurted. "Peter Parker. That's my uncle's truck. Is he hurt?"

"Peter?" The rough voice of his uncle sounded even rougher now coming from in front of the store. "Let him up. That's my nephew. Oh, Peter, son, come here." Peter could see his uncle holding his arms out, and he hurried to his side, letting the cops stay behind him. Uncle Ben was in an old leather jacket and had a thermal blanket draped over his shoulders. Peter hugged him fiercely, and Ben let out a sudden "oof. You've gotten pretty strong, kiddo."

Peter flinched and loosened his grip. He could see a hulking, bald black man in a black sport coat and a yellow shirt, both torn in several places, chatting casually with one of the officers, who looked extremely intimidated. "All I'm saying is maybe yell something before you go shooting. I know I'm huge and black, but sometimes when the caller says stuff like 'Power Man handled it, you just need to pick the guy up,' the huge black guy at the scene is Power Man. I mean, I coulda saved this shirt, you know, then you forgot that I was there, and now look." He gestured down at himself. Another bullet had apparently ripped through one leg of his pants and come unnervingly close to shot-in-the-package territory. "If some ordinary guy had saved the day, you'da just ruined all of his hard work. And killed him."

"Yes sir," the cop said quietly.

Peter blinked. "He saved my life," Ben told him. He pointed to a car where a cop was leaning into the window. "That man over there tried to rob the store. He was going to shoot the cashier, and I stopped him. He actually pulled the trigger. Got the truck, though, instead of the cashier. When I stopped him, he turned the gun on me, and I thought I was a goner until Luke over there punched him away from me. The guy shot him a few times, but he didn't even seem to notice. Crazy, all these supers running around, but I'm glad it happened tonight." 

"Why'd you get involved?" Peter asked.

"Well, I had to," Ben said. "I wasn't going to let someone get hurt when I could stop it."

Peter stared at him for a moment. He looked over at the car, shamefaced at his actions earlier. He stood up and peered into the car to get a better look at the man who had almost killed his uncle. 

He screamed.

The cops and the superhero turned to stare at him, and Peter pointed a panicked finger at the man in the car. "I... he... he was... I... he..."

"What?" Uncle Ben asked.

Peter took a deep breath. "I was at an underground wrestling ring thing. That man robbed the organizer. I... I could have stopped him. You almost died because of me."

+----+

"All right, now slow down, son." Ben Parker was pacing in the kitchen, looking over at Peter while his wife sat nervously by, glancing occasionally at the cookies she had started making when Peter told her what had happened. She had been baking for four hours already, and there was a small pile of chocolate chip cookies on the counter. Aunt May had never made such a large batch of panic-cookies in Peter's memory, though her baking spree when Peter's parents died had apparently been best described as an epic undertaking. "When did all this start?"

"About two weeks ago," Peter said. He reached for a cookie and Aunt May slapped his hand away. "I was at that tour of Oscorp for school and I got bit by one of the spiders they were testing hyperadaptive radioactivated retroviral induction on when it escaped from a cage. I went to bed with a fever and I woke up with..." Peter rolled up his left sleeve and flexed. The muscle wasn't actually all that impressive, but he hadn't yet found the upper limit of his own strength, and Uncle Ben clearly got the point.

"All right. And your first thought was to try and break into wrestling?" Uncle Ben looked a little skeptical. Peter flushed bright red.

"Well... I mean... yes?"

Aunt May shook her head. "Peter, we've raised you smarter than that. You should have told us what happened!"

"I was a little freaked out," Peter protested.

"I'm a little freaked out," Uncle Ben objected.

"The important thing is what happens now," Aunt May said insistently. She got up to pull her last batch of cookies from the oven. "You have to think carefully. This is a big thing."

"You know what we should do..." Ben tapped his fingers against the table. May put down the cookies and reached over to the counter to hand one to Ben before he could burn himself on a fresh one. "We should contact that Richards fellow in Manhattan. I imagine he can be discreet. Peter, I can't tell you what to do with this, but I know I wouldn't waste it on wrestling."

"No." Peter brushed his finger along the table. He'd been a little too scared to try it so far, but he suspected that there was enough grip on the ends of his fingers to let him climb up a vertical surface without a proper handhold. It caught and rattled the table a bit. Peter stared at the cookies as they trembled on their tray. "You're right. I should... I have superstrength. And my reflexes are... like... precognition good. It's like I'm a Jedi. I could... I could be a hero."

Uncle Ben flushed with obvious pride, but Aunt May shook her head. "Peter, that's dangerous," she began, but Ben cut her off.

"With great power comes great responsibility, May Flower. If Peter wants to use this to help people, we'll help him do that."

Peter got up from his seat to hug Uncle Ben. "Thank you, Uncle Ben." He squeezed him gently. "I'm so glad you're okay," he added as tears ran down his cheeks. "I promise, I'll do everything I can to keep you and Aunt May safe. Nobody is going to know who I am, I'll wear a mask and everything, and not just as a gimmick. It'll keep you safe."

"Of course, Peter," May said. "But you're not going to do anything dangerous like that until you're out of school."

Peter thought about protesting, but something about the look in Ben's eyes told him to back down.

+----+

It took three weeks before Reed Richards answered Uncle Ben's messages by arriving personally at the Parker household. He wasn't in uniform, for which Peter was immensely grateful, and he asked for a demonstration of Peter's strength, at which point Peter led him into the garage and lifted Uncle Ben's truck over his head, although he had to crouch to keep it from crunching into the ceiling.

Mister Richards immediately offered Peter a ride to the Baxter Building. May came along on the grounds that her nephew would get himself into huge trouble somehow if he was left unsupervised, and when they walked into the lobby, Mister Richards sent a message up ahead and took them to a little conference room on the thirtieth floor that commanded an incredible view of the surrounding towers. There they were met by Sue Storm, who raised a perfect eyebrow at Peter and began to negotiate with Aunt May.

Their decisions did not impress Peter, but he supposed it made sense for him to be trained, and the Fantastic Four were a good group to mentor a young hero. Still...

"No heroing? Aunt May, I could be helping people--"

"You could be getting hurt!" May shook her head. "If they need you, they'll call you, but only if they really need you. Just think of it this way: You're a lot less likely to get hurt the first time you go up against someone really scary like that horrible Doctor Doom, and if you're well-trained, you can save lives for a lot longer."

Peter considered pointing out that the Fantastic Four were two scientists, a pilot, and a kid, and unless you counted Johnny Storm being unnaturally good-looking, not one of them had any practice with any of their superpowers before they started saving the world. He could already tell that the counterargument to that would be that they'd have been better off with some practice.

Whether that meant three years of practice, Peter didn't know, but...

"Fine. Will I get to go to space with you guys sometimes or something?"

Reed hemmed and hawed for a few moments before he nodded.

"Then I'll agree to this. But I get to design my own costume."

+----+

The first time Peter saw Johnny Storm in person, he was trying out the new costume. Since he would be auxiliary to the Fantastic Four, he had gone with a sort of hybrid of their blue uniforms and the red-and-blue of the wrestling outfit he'd cobbled together for himself from two old hoodies and two pairs of sweatpants. It had a spider on the front of it, and little patches on the arms with the same spider emblem. It was just a little armored, and Reed had made several offers to use unstable molecules to help Peter add various functions to the suit, all of which had sounded really fun and pretty useless. Instead, he'd asked Reed to help him develop a chemical he could use to spin a web like a spider's. The idea had come to him before the Uncle Ben Incident, and he already had a design for the shooters and a decent idea of what the ideal chemical makeup would be. Reed had needed to sit down for a minute after he read the formula. Peter supposed he was just shocked it wasn't a crayon drawing of a squirt gun full of glue. That had been the first draft, and Peter knew better than to turn over a first draft to Mister Fantastic. He was pretty sure he'd impressed Reed, though.

This was probably why the first words Johnny Storm said to him were "are you the stupid whiz-kid Reed won't shut up about?"

Peter had just finished pulling his mask down, a full-face thing that he felt did a pretty good job of both concealing his identity and helping him to stay focused through the (frankly shocking) flood of input his enhanced senses dumped into him. Johnny had obviously poked his head in hoping to get a glimpse of Peter's face. "Dude!" Peter yelled. "Face!"

The Human Torch stepped fully into the room. Peter had to admit he was... attractive.

Okay, so maybe he was more like super attractive.

Peter refused to even think the word that meant simultaneously high temperature and highly attractive.

"Not like I can see your face," Johnny said.

"You were trying," Peter said.

"Nope. Just came in to say hi."

"So if I ask your sister, she'll tell me you had permission to go in?"

"Ooh, gonna tell my sister on me. I'm scared." Johnny pretended to hide behind his hands. Peter rolled his eyes and then spent a moment regretting how his mask concealed the gesture, because Johnny was missing out on some high-quality scorn, and Peter wanted someone that attractive to really appreciate his scorn.

"Hey now, sweet little number like you shouldn't be scared. Come to Spidey, I'll protect you." Peter held his arms out and gestured towards himself. When Johnny didn't move, he waggled his fingers again.

"I'm not hugging you," Johnny said.

"Aw, come on, are you really gonna leave me hanging? That's cold."

Johnny blinked. Peter grinned. 

"I mean, come on," Peter said. "You can't just go around being such a wet blanket."

Johnny glared at him. 

"I'm sure you're a cool guy most of the time," Peter continued. "I won't hold it against you that you're being so icy."

Johnny shook his head. "Are you gonna bug me all day, or are we going to go do this stupid workout?"

"Hey now, chill out."

Johnny smirked. "You need to stop getting your puns off of dumb websites."

"Must you snuff my comedic hopes?"

"That one's gonna come back to bite you."

"You wound me." Peter started for the door. "But you're right. We can't just cool our heels in here all day."

Johnny followed him.

It turned out that Reed had gotten SHIELD to prepare a warehouse for them to train in. The five of them loaded up in the Fantasti-car (Peter really had to talk to Sue about letting Reed name these things), with Ben Grimm poking fun at Johnny the whole way, suggesting that the Fantastic Four replace him with Peter. Peter thought it was over the line until Johnny took the very mature option of saying "He can't do this!" and jumping out to circle the flying car as a big streak of fire.

Peter rolled his eyes. "It is _on,"_ he said, them he jumped out of his seat and out of the car, to the immense distress of everyone except Reed. He dropped past Johnny, stuck out one hand, and fired off one of his web shooters. He hit the side of a building and swung, clinging to the line and whooping as he came up in front of the Fantasti-car. He could hear Sue scolding Reed behind him, and he could see Johnny streaking out ahead. Peter kept slinging webs through the concrete-and-glass canyons of New York until they got where they were going, and he landed on the roof. Johnny had gotten there ahead of him and was standing smugly atop the warehouse. "Show off," Peter said.

"You mad, bro?" Johnny teased.

Peter smirked. "Spider-Bro. And yeah, I'm mad." His grin widened into a real smile. "You wanna make it up to me?"

"Nope." Johnny kept the smug smile plastered on his face.

"Come on. We don't have to fight. We can be friends. Actually, you're pretty cute. We can be more than friends."

Johnny rolled his eyes. "You must have been blinded by my beauty the instant I walked in the room back there, because you are missing all sorts of I'm-not-interested."

"No, that'd just be tragic. If I was blinded... I mean, I'm serious. You're really... I mean, just... yeah." Peter gestured to Johnny's entire... Johnnyness.

"Dude. Not into it." Johnny shrugged. "Not blinded by your beauty. In fact... if you're blinded by beauty, does ugly make you see better? 'Cause dude, I swear, you're helping my eyes. Like, a lot."

Reed landed the Fantasti-car before Peter could make a witty retort to that (admittedly kinda clever) insult. Sue climbed out first and called out "No more hitting on my little brother and no more giving me heart attacks."

"Aw, Sue... come on, I can do one of those, but I need to entertain myself somehow. I mean, I don't have an X-box. Gotta get my kicks someplace." Peter turned his best winning smile on her and once again cursed the mask. He should have done one of those masks that only covered the top. Except it would still cover his top-notch eye rolling. It would have been nice to just get stuck on a badly-staffed spaceship and be famous and openly cool like the Four.

"Spider-Man, please focus," Reed said.

"Right." Peter sighed. "Fine. Okay. Let's go."

+----+

Peter retracted his opinion of how much training superfights took after the third time The Thing punched him into a wall. 

This was going to be hard.

Johnny laughing at him in the corner didn't help.

+----+

Daily Bugle, June 19th, 2012

THE FANTASTIC FIVE?  
New Spider-Man Spotted With Famous Foursome

Famous superteam The Fantastic Four were spotted cavorting with a spider-themed figure yesterday in Manhattan. The group proceeded to a warehouse rumored to be owned by SHIELD, and spent several hours inside. A press release distributed by The Invisible Woman, Susan Storm-Richards, named their new friend Spider-Man and claimed that he is a young man with recently-acquired powers being mentored by the team.  
Information about Spider-Man is limited, although the young hero did leave a small trail of sticky lines from which he swung on his way from the Baxter Building to the warehouse he vanished into with the Four. While very few public heroes have openly mentored others, Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four is well known for his philanthropic work and contributions to the superhero community.  
Speaking for SHIELD, agent Phil Coulson said that Spider-Man is expected to serve as a powerful defender of New York, but wouldn't address rumors that the Fantastic Four were looking to recruit a fifth member. "That's a matter for the Fantastic Four," he said when asked.  
Check these pages for more updates on the career of New York's newest hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this should be interesting. I've seen a lot of stuff where Johnny is pursuing Peter and Peter is just too... Peter to get it. I wanted a more well-adjusted, confident Peter Parker, so I had Uncle Ben teach him the power/responsibility lesson in person instead of by dying and inducing crushing guilt.
> 
> If you want to be technical about it, I think this probably qualifies as a slow burn fic, but  
> a: I'm not sure,  
> b: I didn't particularly want to put it in the tags, and  
> c: I think if I tag a fic with the Human Torch in it as "slow burn" I'll be obligated to write a scene in which Deadpool slaps me while repeating "really, dude? You really went there?" over and over.


	2. Chapter 2

Reed Richards was utterly insane. This was not new information, but Johnny hadn't quite grasped the full breadth and magnitude of his brother-in-law's madness. If there was one thing that proved Reed was slightly more coo-coo than a flock of doves, it was this little scheme. 

It was going to end in tears. Tears, and humiliation, and some kind of huge public scandal with reporters and tabloids and a fistfight. Not even a big huge superfight with explosions and yelling and burning buildings. Just a stupid boring fistfight.

And they hadn't even told him Spider-Man's secret identity. Reed had claimed he didn't need to know. Sue had added that he shouldn't even be all that curious, not really, because when was it ever going to be necessary for him to know who Spider-Man was beyond "one of the students at Midtown High."

So here he was, staring up at an ordinary high school, and had it really been only a little more than a year since he was doing that last? The theory, according to Reed, was that if Spider-Man needed help while he was at school, Johnny would be right there. 

Johnny's theory was that Reed knew Spider-Man drove him up the wall more effectively than the stupid webhead climbed, and was trying to torture him. Spider-Man was going to find him. He was going to hit on him. And knowing Johnny's luck, he would be either completely hideous or way too attractive. If he was hideous, Johnny would have to deal with an ugly and probably bug-obsessed gay guy following him around like a lost puppy. If he was attractive, Johnny doubted very much that his self-control would weather being invited to various supply-closet makeout sessions.

The worst part of it was that Spidey was _clever and funny,_ which was eminently unfair, because that was Johnny's shtick. If he turned out to be clever, and funny, and smart enough to make Reed need to sit down and puzzle out his shit sometimes, and attractive, and wanted Johnny for real instead of to push his buttons, Johnny was going to die. He was going to die after somebody caught him going down on another guy and put it in the papers and caused a scandal, because when people put pretty things in front of Johnny, he didn't have self control. Not really. He was still working on keeping from lighting on fire at weird moments. Next to that, keeping his hands off of cute boys who totally wanted him was impossible, and he should know, because girls wanted him, boys wanted him, everyone wanted him, and he couldn't blame them, because he was hot as hell, but it still made it almost impossible sometimes.

He was startled by a hand on his shoulder, and a snide voice said "hey, hair, it's called a school. You go in there and ignore the teachers and ohmygod you're the Human Torch." A square-jawed guy who had clearly put enough time into getting ready for his first day that he had no business calling anyone "hair" was staring at Johnny with precisely the same slack-jawed expression that that one guy who tried to mug him a month ago had had.

Before Johnny or The One True Hair could speak, an even snider voice from behind said "hey, I heard Spider-Man is just the Human Torch's boyfriend and Mister Fantastic gave him superpowers so he could join up." 

The One True Hair's face fell, and Johnny turned slowly around. If The One True Hair had looked crestfallen at his faux pas, the guy behind them looked like he was certain he was about to die. One True Hair was tall and big and blond and kinda sexy in a stupid-slab-of-meat way, but this guy was little and scrawny.

"Seymour, you idiot," One True Hair yelled. "You wanna get cooked?" He turned back to Johnny. "Look, I'm sorry about him. I'm Flash Thompson. That's just my idiot buddy Seymour. Don't hurt him, okay? He's special needs. You know, he specially needs a smack across the head."

Johnny sighed. "Dude, not cool." Flash stared at him for a moment. Johnny shook his head. "You're not going to get me to like you after that. Reed's got autism. You just compared someone to my brother-in-law for an insult."

Flash flinched and turned away, and Johnny was about to trudge off into the school building when a boy with shaggy brown hair rounded the corner of the building, stopped for a moment, and then kept walking. Flash started towards him and yelled "Hey, Puny Parker!"

"Seriously?" Johnny muttered. "You really have to push me? You're gonna bully someone in front of the superhero?" 

Johnny started to call up the flames, but "Puny Parker" just kept walking. "Flash, can we not do this right now?" He pulled out a cell phone to check the time. "It's just I'm running late and I don't have time to deal with your clumsy flirting. God. It's like you're pulling a little girl's hair!"

Flash turned red. He opened his mouth to object, but Parker waved a hand to cut him off. "Honestly Flash, I just don't feel that way about you. It was one night, that's all. Can we not make it a big thing?" He hurried into the school. Seymour stared, gape-mouthed, at Flash.

"I... We never," Flash began, but Seymour was already pulling out his phone to start texting people. 

Johnny went into the school. Parker was hurrying on ahead. Johnny jogged to catch up with him. "Did you and Flash really..." he gestured illustratively.

"Me and Flash?" Parker snorted. "Nope. Looks to me like you've met him, you know how awful that would be." He stuck his hand out. "Peter Parker. You must be new here."

Johnny shook his hand, feeling thoroughly wrongfooted. "Yeah. Um. Hi?"

Peter Parker smiled blankly at him for a few moments before he prompted "It's usually customary to introduce yourself at this point."

Johnny actually had to spin his brain back into gear at the unexpected request. "Um... J... Johnny Storm."

"Cool," Peter said.

"Did you not recognize me?" Johnny asked.

Peter smirked. "Should I?"

Johnny stared at him. "I have no idea if you're being sarcastic."

"Still clueless, dude." Peter shrugged. "But whatever."

+----+

The note arrived on Johnny's desk in science class, passed there by Peter Parker, at whom the teacher kept shooting happy little smiles. Johnny wasn't sure if Parker was the teacher's dirty little secret or just a science wiz, but either way the faces they were making at each other needed to stop. Parker handed him the note while shooting a disapproving glance down the table at a solidly-built but somewhat small boy with messy black hair and a winning smile, who was twinkling in their general direction.

Johnny opened the note and read silently.

_Johnny Storm,_

_did they call you the Human Torch because you can light on fire, or because you're just hot?_

Johnny poked Parker. "Really, Pete?"

Parker pointed at the boy with the smile. "It was Blake that sent that. I swear, I'm just the messenger. He didn't, like, say something awful, did he?"

Johnny blinked. He wrote a reply on the paper.

_Yes, they did._

He handed it to Parker. Parker rolled his eyes and passed the note to Blake.

By about halfway through class, Johnny firmly established that a: Blake Farmer was into him in a big way, b: Blake was very forward and kinda sexy about it, and c: Peter Parker was a huge spoilsport. He'd refused to keep passing notes after the fourth one, and Johnny had had to get creative with his powers in order to float the notes back and forth behind Parker's back.

Blake hung back a little to talk to Johnny, and Johnny let him. "You're not shy," he said.

"Nope." Blake grinned. "So?" 

Johnny liked him. He was smart, and actually pretty cute, and he was built about right to be Spider-Man. Reed had put a voice-modulator in the suit, so Johnny could only assume he sounded right. He closed his eyes. "Quick question. Are you Spider-Man?"

Blake shook his head. "I wish. He's so cool!"

Johnny frowned. "I... I'm sorry. I just... You joke around like he does."

"I wasn't," Blake began, but Johnny was hurrying away from him already.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a little voice was screaming that he was walking away from a sure thing, but he didn't need a scandal. He didn't need a scandal and Blake was a big huge scandal just waiting to happen. If he'd been Spidey, maybe it could have worked, but a scandal for just some average guy? Nope.

+----+

Blake flirted hopelessly with him for two weeks. When they had their first group project, Johnny let Liz, the girl behind him who'd snatched him up first, be his partner. Blake looked disappointed, until Parker tapped him on the shoulder, said something about needing someone who actually got the whole science thing, and started talking incomprehensible science talk.

Two days later, Johnny spotted the two of them walking down the hall hand-in-hand. By the time they turned in their project, they'd been openly dating for days. They'd gotten in trouble when they got caught making out in one of the bathrooms on the second floor. All Johnny could think was that it could have been him, and he knew better than to really want it, but... he still wanted it.

It was all very frustrating. He couldn't even really be jealous. After all, he'd turned down Blake pretty thoroughly. He had no claim to Blake.

None of which prevented him from sulking. He was sixteen. He had a right, nay, a responsibility to sulk. Maybe he could do like Doctor Banner and have an emotion-triggered alternate form, turn huge and blue and start moping destructively around the city as The Incredible Sulk. He stared up at the few stars visible from the roof of the Baxter Building and muttered "Sulk sad. Sulk eat entire pint of ice cream. Sulk listen to Cure" into the night.

"If Sulk eat entire pint of ice cream too much, Sulk in danger of becoming Incredible Bulk," Spidey said from the edge of the roof, and Johnny flinched, flailing into a sitting position instead of laying on his back on the helipad.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Johnny asked.

Spider-Man shrugged as he pulled himself up. "I was bored. Thought I'd come bother you."

"Mission accomplished," Johnny said. "Go away."

"Aw, come on." Spidey sat down next to him. "It sounds like you're having a rough day."

Johnny flopped back on the helipad. It hurt when his head hit the pavement, but he ignored it. "What do you care?"

"I'm a giver. A helper." Spider-Man patted Johnny's knee. "I'm here to be a friend."

"That's not what you're usually after," Johnny grumbled.

Spidey snorted. "What, that? I'm a flirt. I mean... hell, Johnny, I got a boyfriend and everything. I'm just flirty."

"Oh my god, you are an ass," Johnny exclaimed. "You flirt with me even though you have a boyfriend?"

Spidey shrugged. "It's not like we're really serious yet." He leaned back so that he was staring up at the sky. "So tell your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man all about it. What's up? Got grounded? Girl trouble?" He looked over at Johnny and the lenses over his eyes narrowed as he focused. "Butt trouble?" he said sympathetically.

"You are horrible!" Johnny laughed. He turned to look at Spider-Man. "Girl trouble. Kinda. I guess. There was... there was someone I liked, and I didn't make a move, and now some other guy... you know how it goes."

Spider-Man was silent for a long couple of minutes. Finally, he said "I'm sorry to hear about that, Johnny. I guess I always just figured you would kinda get whatever you wanted." He shrugged. "I know if I was Blake, I'd choose you over Parker any day."

Johnny sat up suddenly. "How did you know I meant Blake?"

Spidey snorted. "We go to the same school, and you are not subtle," he said. "I mean, maybe to some people you are, but I've got, like, crazy-cool spider senses. You haven't exactly been keeping your shit together around him."

"Oh god. Does everyone know?"

Spider-Man shook his head. "Nah, don't worry. I have my ways. I mean, some people were starting to wonder, but I may have... uh... planted a rumor for you. I hope you're holding up okay."

+----+

Daily Bugle, October 1, 2012

JOHNNY STORM'S NEW SQUEEZE

Amid speculation that Jonathon Storm of the Fantastic Four is at Midtown High to attend school with the mysterious Spider-Man, Midtown High students reveal that the young hero has found something to pay attention to besides web-slingers.  
Although there is no official confirmation, multiple students report that Storm is dating fellow student Mary Jane Watson, an appropriately fiery redhead with a reputation for partying. Laurie Linton, a close friend of Watson's, says the couple appears to be fairly serious. Is this just a teenage fling, or has Johnny Storm found a real match? Fans of the Four will be watching this story in months to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reed Richards has self-diagnosed with autism in at least one comics timeline. Given his level of intelligence, I'm inclined to believe him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben Parker's musical choices in this chapter are literally just what I was listening to while I was writing. 
> 
> Long live Sinatra.

Peter was pretty sure Blake Farmer was going to kill him. Not that it would be deliberate, but it was going to happen anyway. It was probably going to start just like this, too. Uncle Ben was in the next room. Peter could hear him singing along to that music he liked, older music than he should have liked, because Uncle Ben was old, sure, but he'd not even been born yet when Frank Sinatra was popular. Aunt May was downstairs, and she was baking cookies.

And neither of them knew that Peter and Blake were an item. That was the key thing, because it meant that when Blake closed the door, Uncle Ben didn't come to pointedly open it like he had that time Laurie came to work on their art project together. Blake was a boy, after all. And Peter was a boy. And Uncle Ben and Aunt May were great, and very accepting, but for them, people who weren't straight was an arm's-length sort of a thing. Uncle Ben voted Democrat and tsked and sometimes even yelled when someone did something horrible to, for, about, with, or near gay people. Aunt May had come down to the Pride parade a couple of years ago, dragging a confused Peter and saying that he needed to be sure he accepted people like this.

But that was all the interaction they expected to have with gay people. They expected to accept a stranger, and to support a senator, and to donate to a cause. It was unthinkable for their nephew to be bisexual. It just wasn't thought of. Bisexual people lived in someone else's house, on the other side of the TV screen.

They did not, for example, live in the smaller bedroom upstairs. They did not, in that bedroom, get felt up by other boys whose hands were wandering further than usual under their shirt. They certainly did not have other boys paw at their jeans in said bedroom, especially while their Uncle sang along to _When The Sun Goes Down_ in his office.

"Blake," Peter hissed. "Blake, wait."

Blake came up for air. He had moved on to rubbing his face against the zipper of Peter's jeans. Peter considered that he might be completely insane to have stopped him. But still... "Blake, can we talk for a minute before this gets too... y'know... 'cause I mean, I like you, I like, really really like you, but if you take my pants off there will be like, zero talking, and I'm okay with that but it means we have to talk now, and I wanna know what you're ready for and if there's like, stuff you're not ready for, and I really wanna touch your penis but I also wanna respect you, 'cause you're my boyfriend and respecting you is important and I know it, but it's not gonna be respectful if I just reach into your pants which I really wanna do and maybe we can do what you're moving towards but we haven't even locked the door which we definitely gotta do if we're gonna do this, because yeah, like, they'll know if the door is locked but if the door isn't locked and they try to come in, they'll know in, like, excruciating detail and I'm so not okay with that--"

Blake rested an outstretched finger across Peter's lips. "Peter, breathe."

Peter took in a deep breath and decided it was probably a bad idea to exhale entire lungfuls as speech like that. Blake quirked a questioning eyebrow at him. 

"Peter, I want you to fuck me," Blake said. He kissed the little strip of skin that Peter's shirt had exposed when he started rumpling it. "Do you want that?"

"Yes," Peter answered in the smallest voice that had ever left his lips.

Blake smirked. "Boy, all that confidence and swagger just kinda goes away when I kiss you just right, doesn't it?" Peter nodded, and Blake seemed to take that as a cue to keep going. Peter didn't mind this, because he had approximately negative five words in his head. "But it's there somewhere. And Peter, you're sweet, and funny, and sexy, and just about the only guy I know who's smart enough to keep up with me. That's why I want you to be my first."

Peter could feel himself turning red. "You're a... a virgin?"

"Yeah," Blake said. He was blushing pretty hard, too. Peter decided that was okay. "I mean, you've done this before, right? But--"

"No, I haven't." Peter took a bracing breath. He stood up and locked the door. "But I can't think of anyone I want to do this with more than you."

As Blake pressed him up against the door, Peter tried not to think of blond hair and pale blue eyes. Johnny had made his feelings abundantly clear, after all.

Blake got his pants off about then, and Peter stopped thinking altogether.

+----+

"Do you think they heard us?"

Peter stared at the ceiling and tried to think about what whatever that was was. It was a little difficult. He remembered looking into Blake's eyes and feeling himself quivering with pleasure. He knew he'd made some noises. He supposed noises could be heard, but he wondered for a moment who "they" were and why "they" would be relevant.

Oh. Right.

"God, I hope not." Peter tried to sigh, but he was still breathing too hard. "I can't get grounded while I'm still trying to catch my breath."

"Is it supposed to be that good the first time?" Blake cuddled closer to him, and Peter was about to suggest that they should try it again just as soon as they could to get a larger sample size so they could do a proper analysis when his phone started ringing.

He wanted to ignore it. He had a warm body in his bed and that was important, it was really, really important, but it was the special ringtone that he couldn't change or silence, and it was definitely Reed calling, and he had to get up and answer it, so he rolled kind of floppily over and grabbed it off the nightstand, poking gracelessly at the "answer" button. "Peter," Reed said on the other end of the phone as soon as he answered, "I know we're only supposed to call you in emergencies, but this is very urgent. We need you downtown. I'm sending the coordinates to your phone. If my numbers are right, you can get here in about twenty minutes."

Peter stared at the ceiling. This was not happening. Not now. The call he'd been longing for at the one moment he least wanted it. "Yeah. Um. Give it about an extra five minutes. Can you maybe send me a ride?"

"Not at your house, but Johnny can meet you halfway and pick you up."

"Done," Peter said. "I'll see you in a few." He turned to Blake, and Blake was staring at him kind of blankly. "Who was that?"

"A friend. We did some work together over the summer and he needs help with some kind of urgent..." a picture arrived on the phone and Peter cringed back from the face of some kind of giant alien monster blasting Ben clear through a building. Apparently, the Four had their hands full. "Yeah, that's urgent," Peter said. He went to his closet and pulled the backpack with his spider-suit in it down from where he kept it on the shelf. 

Peter made it about halfway to the door before he realized he still wasn't wearing pants, and he grabbed Blake's pants and pulled them on. They didn't fit perfectly, but they fit. "Blake, I'm really sorry," Peter said. His knees were still shaking. Running off to do superhero things immediately after sex was probably a bad idea. He should be cuddling with his boyfriend and enjoying his very first afterglow. "If this wasn't super important, I'd stay here, but I really need to do this." He looked down at his socks on the floor and grabbed a shirt that turned out to also be Blake's "I'm not sure when I'll get back, but, I mean, stay here, of course. Obviously. Right?"

Blake nodded numbly. Peter had the feeling there would be at least one huge argument in his future. He pulled Blake's shirt on, unlocked the door, and opened it on silence. He hurried past Uncle Ben's office, changed into most of the suit in the bathroom, put the pants and shirt he'd borrowed from Blake on over it, and hurried downstairs. Uncle Ben and Aunt May were both sitting in the living room, looking stern. Two huge arguments, then. Fantastic. 

No.

Better word.

Funderful. Two huge arguments. Funderful.

"Young man," Uncle Ben began, but Peter interrupted him.

"Great chat, Uncle Ben, but Reed just called," he blurted, half-turning to point a thumb at the front door. "There a... thing... attacking the city... I gotta... you know... save the world. Not that I'd rather fight a huge alien monster than talk to you about... you know, whatever. But. Um. Bye." He hurried out the front door and broke into a run. He ducked down a dark alley, pulling on the gloves and mask of his suit as he went. A certain amount of independent practice to win a bet with Johnny had taught him to remove pants while maintaining a running pace, and he got Blake's shirt and pants off and stuffed into the backpack, which he webbed to somebody's garage before he emerged from the alley and started really pounding the pavement.

He normally would have breezed past thirty miles an hour and hit fifty in seconds, but his legs were still all shaky and loose. It was like trying to run on two tubes full of gummy bears. A car passed by, and Peter shot a webline to it. He gripped and let the car sweep him along, jumping and yelling in displeasure at the sensation in his much-abused legs. He landed on top of the car and knocked on the driver side window. It rolled down, and he dropped his head down to speak to the driver. "Hey, if you could maybe head towards Manhattan, that'd awesome."

The driver stared at him.

"Eyes on the road, dude," Peter said, pointing. "It's just, there's an emergency, and I can't really websling in the suburbs real well. The Human Torch'll pick me up pretty quick. I can keep my balance just fine, just go ahead and drive fast."

The driver blinked, swallowed, nodded stiffly, and started accelerating. Peter sat down cross-legged on top of the car. He needed a sandwich. He should have asked if Johnny could bring a sub or something. Maybe some cookies. He leaned over to talk to the driver again. "Hey, uh, long shot, I know, but do you have, like, a granola bar or something? I kinda left the house in a hurry."

A voice in the back seat said "Yeah, hang on," and there was some shuffling, and then Liz Allan from school poked her head around the seat and handed him a Nature Valley bar. 

"Aw, thanks, you're a lifesaver." Peter grabbed the granola bar and winked at her. He returned to sitting on top of the car, and was just finishing with the granola bar when he spotted Johnny streaking in over the trees not far away. He pulled down his mask and stood up. The suit was not designed for going commando. Everything felt all squished. Peter held out his hands, and Johnny grabbed him and hoisted him into the air. They rushed together through the air towards where the Fantastic Four were fighting... something.

+----+

"I'm fine, really. It's just, like, the mother of all wedgies." Peter picked at his ass, where the costume was trying to boldly go where, if his night hadn't been rudely interrupted by, apparently, a Guardians of the Galaxy fuckup of truly epic proportions, exactly one man would have gone before.

Johnny rolled his eyes. "There's this thing called underwear," he said. "You see, normal, non-bug-brained people use it to prevent their weird ultra-spandex spider-themed fetish gear from disappearing all the way up their butts."

"Yeah, believe it or not, I usually wear it under this thing. I just... I got the call at a bad time, you know?"

Johnny leaned back in his seat in the Fantasti-car. "How bad?"

Peter looked over at him, wishing for the umpteenth time that he could really get facial expressions across with the mask. "You know how when you get done foiling your little supervillain there's a couple of minutes where you don't want to stand up and go anywhere?"

"Ew." Johnny looked up at the sky. "Yes."

"Spider-Man, can we not talk about masturbation in the Fantasti-car?" Sue said.

"It's relevant to my answer. See, 'cause it turns out that it's harder to run at, like, fifty miles an hour when you're immediately post-coitus." Peter started walking two fingers of his right hand across his outstretched left palm, giving them a decidedly wobbly gait. "Anyways, I didn't have time to wait for my legs to not be all woozlish, so I didn't exactly have time for underpants, either."

"I noticed," Johnny said. "When Drax backhanded you, your dick flopped, like, super-obviously in your pants."

"Johnny!" Sue yelled. 

Ben made a little choking noise. "I coulda gone my whole life without hearin' about that."

"Well, I'm kind of proud of myself for spotting it, 'cause it's so small." Johnny smirked.

"That's not what my boyfriend was saying earlier," Peter snarked back at him. "Nice to know you're paying attention, though, flamebrain." He glanced over the side and pointed. "Over there, Reed." 

Reed piloted the Fantasti-car over the alley Peter had stowed his backpack in, and Peter let himself as stealthily as possible down onto the roof of the garage he'd fixed the bag to. He heard the Four zooming away, and he shucked the spider-suit and quickly donned Blake's clothes. He walked back home and found Blake asleep on the couch in the living room and Aunt May looking like she was probably going to shoot lasers out of her eyes if Peter said the wrong thing. A cup of coffee was clutched in her hands. 

"Good evening, Peter," she said.

Blake stirred and sat up. "Pete? They... um, they heard."

Peter pinched the bridge of his nose and flinched. He had the finger strength to accidentally break his own nose now. That kinda sucked. "That's... um... so, Aunt May, crazy thing. So, there was this... um... we went through the woods, and there was a tick--"

"Don't you lie to me, young man!" Aunt May snapped. Uncle Ben came in from the kitchen with his own mug, and one that he handed to Blake. Peter had the feeling there wasn't a mug for him. "Did you even explain where you were going?"

"Um... a little?" Peter sat down on the least comfortable chair in the living room.

Uncle Ben gave him a disappointed look. "If you're not okay with sharing that part of your life with someone, son, should you really be having sex with them?"

Peter sighed.

+----+

Blake didn't break up with him, but it was a near thing. Peter had to get Aunt May and Uncle Ben to reassure him that he wasn't keeping any _bad_ secrets, and he was a little surprised they'd agreed to do so. He'd also had to promise to tell his secret if things got any more serious.

He'd also gotten grounded from everything except treating Blake to various things and his duties with the Four. Blake, according to Aunt May, deserved to be treated to just about anything he wanted after being treated so rudely by Peter. The only good thing, in Peter's opinion, that came out of the whole fiasco was that Johnny definitely didn't think Peter had lost his virginity the night of the attack. If he and Blake had been closer and touchier than before, Peter suspected that Johnny would have made the connection and puzzled out his identity. Johnny wasn't a megagenius like Reed, or even a regular one like Peter and Blake, but Peter knew and respected his intelligence. 

If Spider-Man had bragged (like an idiot) about getting to have sex with his boyfriend, and then Peter Parker had obviously upgraded his relationship to the next level at the same time, the clues would have all been there: a snarky science wiz with a boyfriend that things weren't serious with until that night, both of them unimpressed by Johnny's celebrity and power... Peter trusted Johnny to put the pieces together.

Instead...

"Trouble in paradise, Parker?"

Peter glanced over at where Blake was diligently taking notes instead of playing footsie with him under the table. He sighed. "Yeah. A bit. I sorta screwed up big time."

Johnny looked at Blake, then at Peter. "Are you guys still dating?"

"Barely." Peter sighed. "And I'm, like, super-grounded for a month." He flopped dramatically onto the table. Johnny rubbed a hand in circles on his back. 

"I'm not sure if this helps, but I never really thought you two were a great couple," Johnny told him.

Peter turned his head towards Johnny for the express purpose of rolling his eyes. "Thanks, Doctor Phil. I'm so glad I could be on the show."

Johnny smirked. "Hey, if he dumps you, just tell me and I'll drag you off to the Baxter Building. You can drown your sorrows in Mountain Dew and fighting games."

Peter blinked. "Does that offer hold up if he doesn't dump me?"

Johnny smirked. "Yeah. I just figure it's more urgent if he does."

Peter grinned. They might not actually be dating, but Mary Jane was obviously a good influence on Johnny. He barely knew the girl, really, but Laurie thought she was just the best, and the one time they met, Mary Jane had called him "tiger," let him know in no uncertain terms that she'd spotted him cavorting around his bedroom in the spider-suit over the summer and could easily keep a secret like the Human Torch having a secret desire for nerd-dick, and then insisted on taking care of it all herself because she didn't trust Peter to not fuck everything up.

"You get Watson to come up there yet?" Peter asked.

Johnny nodded with a mildly traumatized look in his eye. "That girl is unreal in Mortal Kombat. Peter, she destroyed me. With every single character. It was scary."

Peter grinned.

+----+

Daily Bugle, October 30, 2012

SPIDER-MAN SWINGS INTO ACTION

An extraterrestrial threat was thwarted last night by the timely intervention of the Fantastic Four, and for the first time, New York's favorite team of superheroes called in their new ally, the mysterious Spider-Man. The alien, which Guardians of the Galaxy spokescreature Rocket described as "some kind of interdimensional whatsit," was too much for the Fantastic Four to handle alone, and apparently too fast for the team's heavy hitter The Thing to approach, but Spider-Man's superior speed was evidently enough to let the Fantastic Four contain the creature.  
"The battle turned when Spidey showed up," said Johnny Storm when Bugle reporter Eddie Brock caught up with him early this morning for an interview. "It would have been a lot worse without him. He has this thing where he knows when a blow is coming most of the time, and when the Guardians [of the Galaxy] arrived, he even helped us all get out of the way of their crashing ship. It was really too bad about Drax thinking he was a supervillain."  
His actions in Manhattan last night have certainly left an impression with New Yorkers, and Spider-Man's fan club is sure to grow.


	4. Chapter 4

Mary Jane Watson had a superpower. She owned whatever room she was put into. It was kind of incredible to watch her hobnobbing with Tony Stark and Steve Rogers like she'd known them for years instead of minutes. Johnny thought that she was just maybe not all human. Tony laughed again and MJ reached past him to grab another couple of little tiny sandwiches and pile them onto a plate. She retreated gracefully, flirting with Tony just enough to be polite but not enough to raise eyebrows. When she walked, she had this way of swaying her hips that told everyone exactly what it was that had attracted Johnny to her in the first place.

Not, Johnny reminded himself sternly, that he was actually dating her. He wouldn't _mind_ dating her, but he wasn't. And he wasn't entirely certain she would want to.

That was, honestly, a new experience for him. 

"Here you go, Heatstroke." She handed him the little plate of tiny sandwiches, kissing him very properly on the cheek. 

"Thanks, MJ," Johnny muttered. "How do you work them like that? Tony is, like, eighty percent scorn by volume and Cap disapproves of literally everything."

"It's the face." MJ waved at herself, and Johnny had to admit that being a brutally gorgeous redhead with a rockin' body probably helped, except that he knew he was an unreasonably attractive blond with an equally rockin' body, and Janet Van Dyne had never smiled at him the way Tony Stark smiled at MJ. He felt a little rejected, honestly.

"Yeah, that face is..." Johnny grinned. "I'm so glad I get to fake-date the prettiest girl in, like, any room."

"Keep those compliments coming and when you fake-propose, I'll fake-accept." Mary Jane waved at a passing waiter with a tray of little glasses of what probably wasn't really champagne, but might have been. She grabbed two of the flutes, sipped, made a face, and handed one to Johnny. "We can have two and a half fake kids and live in a fake house with a fake picket fence."

Johnny smirked. He had a plate in one hand and a glass in the other, and there was no table nearby, so he found himself looking mournfully at the tiny sandwiches and wondering if Sue would actually kill him if she caught him picking up a tiny sandwich with his lips. MJ grabbed one and held it out for him to take from her fingers. He accepted the offer, chewed, swallowed and bumped her hip with his own. "I fake-love you, Mary Jane Watson. Let's fake-run away together. I hear fictional Bermuda is really nice this time of year." He sipped from his glass. It was sparkling cider. He made the same face MJ had.

"Do they have Super Smash Brothers in fictional Bermuda?" MJ asked. "Because I still need to beat your ass. I mean, me beating your ass is the cornerstone of our fake relationship."

Johnny rolled his eyes. "You beating my ass is the cornerstone of our real relationship." He pointed across the room to where Bruce Banner was slow-dancing with the Silver Surfer. They both looked confused. "You beating my ass and both of us laughing at stuff like that."

"Oh my god," MJ said, stifling a giggle. "It's not okay to laugh at the Hulk, right? He might turn green and huge and start rampaging around the city, right?"

"It's a little okay," Johnny said comfortingly. "Bruce actually has a pretty good sense of humor. I mean, he's a big nerd. Like, he's a bigger nerd than Parker."

"Yeah, but Parker's gay." Mary Jane pointed. "What's _he_ doing with the Silver Surfer? He knows that's a dude, right?"

"The Silver Surfer sorta... doesn't quite get parties." Johnny smiled at the memory of the time someone told the alien superhero that dancing was just how humans expressed affection at parties and he went around pulling literally everyone into a slow dance. He'd completely ruined the first superhero Christmas party Johnny ever attended. It was amazing. Glorious, even. Johnny started telling the story, interrupting himself only to let MJ feed him more sandwiches and sometimes to go to the snack table with her.

The thing was, Mary Jane was brilliant at parties, and brilliant for hanging out (and demolishing Johnny in video games), and brilliant for sitting with at school, and he was probably a tiny bit in not-fake-love with her, but he suspected that everyone was. About the fifth time she fed him a little sandwich, he locked eyes with her and knew for a fact he was totally screwed. The seventh tiny sandwich was when he gave up and suggested getting away from all the stuffy grown-ups. Charles Xavier had just arrived, and he was going to give a speech about unity or charity or hygiene or something, and Johnny was _so not interested,_ and he just blurted out "you wanna go up to the roof and make out?" which was perhaps the least suave thing he'd ever said except for that time he'd told Spider-Man about his dick-flop. He cringed immediately and managed to not compound the problem by laughing at how Mary Jane had frozen in the middle of chewing on a little olive-and-cheese thing.

She slowly started chewing again, swallowed, stole the rest of Johnny's cider, and downed it in one go. She handed the fancy glass to the nearest waiter and grabbed Johnny's hand. "Where's the roof?"

Xavier was starting in on his speech (charity) when Johnny led MJ through the door that had roof access. The November air was cold, but Johnny was hot, and that was a quantitative assessment, not a qualitative one (he really needed to stop hanging out with Spidey so much, because the only person who used those kind of big words more than Spidey was Parker, and Johnny thought Parker was cute enough, but Spidey was a lot easier to pick up habits from because Johnny was willing to admit to having kind of a thing about him, and picking up words like "qualitative assessment" was going to make everyone think he was a huge nerd). 

Johnny sat on the edge of the roof with Mary Jane, and he was so flustered that she had to start them off, but the evening went pretty well if the exasperated look on Reed's face when he retrieved them from the roof was any indication. Johnny had his license, and he delighted in dropping Mary Jane off personally at her home. Parker was out next door, talking to his uncle on the porch, and Johnny kissed MJ goodbye and practically floated over to go say hi to his classmate. 

"Hey, Burnout," Parker said, slightly mopey.

Johnny grinned. "Hey, Dweeboid." He sat down in the last bit of free space on the porch swing. "What's wrong?"

Parker sighed. "Blake dumped me. He said I wasn't taking 'us' seriously enough."

Johnny winced. He decided not to try and share anything about his complicated relationship status. "You wanna come play dumb video games at my place?"

Parker looked imploringly at his uncle. Ben rolled his eyes. "Go ahead. It'll take your mind off it.

+----+

"I really don't think it's broken." Spider-Man inspected his arm, which was bent at a weird angle. "I mean, that's just, like, dislocated really low on the bones, right?"

"Spider-Man, that's broken." Reed was looking at the Webhead like he thought he was crazy. He might have a point.

"Dude, how are you not screaming?" Johnny asked. "I'd be crying like a sexy, manly baby if I were you."

Spidey shrugged. It had to have jolted the arm, but he didn't react. "When you get hurt, sometimes your body does this whole thing where there's a lot of endorphins. I actually feel pretty awesome right now. Hey, Johnny, you wanna go get pizza?"

Sue grabbed Spidey's broken arm and pulled hard to set the break. Spider-Man screamed at a surprisingly high pitch. "Okay," he gasped. "It hurts now."

Reed and Sue took him into the lab, and Johnny flopped onto the couch. "You didn't have to hit him so hard, Balboa," he said, cutting a glance at Ben.

Ben shook his head. "Kid's gotta learn to take a hit," he said. "Not everybody's as soft as me."

"You're made out of rocks and you shout 'it's clobberin' time' when you get into fights," Johnny pointed out. "Nobody's as soft as you, because they're all softer."

"Naw, I'm a sweetheart," Ben shot back.

"You told the cashier at the grocery store you were gonna start punching things if they didn't get starfruit in soon." Another squeal of pain from the general direction of the lab made Johnny wince. "Also, you straight up broke Spider-Man's arm. I mean, it's usually pretty funny when you break shit, but I _like_ him."

Ben smirked. His lips grated noisily against each other as they moved. "I didn't hit him in the face. He's probably still pretty enough for yer little crush."

"My li... I do NOT have a crush on him," Johnny yelled.

"You totally do," Spider-Man yelled from the lab, followed shortly by "oh my god, Reed, why does that hurt so much?"

Johnny stalked off to his bedroom to go sulk. When that didn't feel sulky enough, he stalked past the lab, where Spidey was getting fitted with some sort of low-profile cast, and down to the garage, where his nice new car was waiting. He called MJ, but she was busy, so he just drove around at random. He might be contributing to global warming, but he probably did more in that vein just by existing than any amount of driving aimlessly through New York could do. Besides, it felt nice to drive around with the top down. He was somewhere near Stark Tower when his phone rang, and it was Parker, and that was just...

Actually, that might be exactly what he needed. He poked the phone where it sat in the holder on his dashboard. "What's up, Superdork?"

"Hey," Parker said. "Your sister-mom invited me to eat dinner at your place, but she says you're sulking. What's up?"

Johnny spluttered for a moment. "Sue invited... man, what the hell?"

Johnny could almost hear Peter smirking. "I guess she thinks compulsively oppositional people are good for digestion. You just missed Spider-Man, you know. He said he missed you, but he had a poster of you he could look at before bed, and that usually helps him sleep, which I think was probably a sex joke." There was a long, awkward pause, and then Peter added "Did you... uh... you know, did you tap that?" He let Johnny fume for a second and then added "because if you did, then, man, you are a god to me."

Johnny's growing sour mood was derailed by that comment. He laughed, hard, and trailed off after a minute. "No, man. I never once tapped that. I'm not into dorks in spandex."

"Ooh," Peter said. "Are you maybe into dorks in nice button-ups and slightly old shoes?"

"You wouldn't know a nice button up if it gave you fashion advice." Johnny turned towards home. He blushed. "And I'm dating MJ, remember?"

"Oh," Peter said. "Right. I kinda forgot."

Peter held himself a little awkwardly all night, explaining that he'd wrenched his shoulder really bad playing catch with Uncle Ben. He sat with the Four after dinner, and Johnny didn't really mind when Peter fell asleep on him in the middle of their horror movie marathon. He must have fallen asleep in there somewhere, too, because when he woke up, he was stretched out on the couch and Peter was waving a cup of tea under his nose.

"You're a beautiful person," Johnny told him, and Peter grinned. Johnny drove him to school, and MJ met them with a kiss on the cheek for Johnny and clap on the shoulder for Peter.

+----+

"So you're actually dating her now?" Spidey looked a little disappointed. "I'm crushed, Candlepower. I thought you and I had something special."

"Yeah, right," Johnny said. "You can probably even swing around the city faster than I fly. You just stay behind to look at my butt."

"Yours and Sue's." Spider-Man chuckled. "Have you ever looked at your sister? She is smokin', man." He'd been MIA for a few days after the broken arm, but apparently he could recover from major skeletal trauma in about a week and a half, and he'd swung happily up to the roof that evening before suggesting they go find someplace else to hang out. Johnny knew the suit Reed had given to Spidey could keep him nice and toasty in even the coldest places, and so he'd not even felt a little guilty about suggesting a race to the top of the Statue of Liberty.

He still thought Spider-Man must have cheated somehow to beat him there.

"I do not, in fact, think my sister is smokin'. I think she is my sister and also that you are gross." Johnny picked up another hot dog from the small pile he'd brought in order to be nice to Spidey and also to handicap himself and actually to brag that he had time to stop for hot dogs on the way and still beat Spidey to the Statue of Liberty.

"Hey, man, I'm just saying it stops being incest if they're hot enough." Spider-Man grinned at him. The rolled-up mask was a pretty sweet sign of trust, really. Johnny still couldn't place the voice, but he did now know for sure that it wasn't Blake. Blake had a much higher voice, and spoke with the light lisp of someone who had firmly entrenched their identity in "gay" and didn't quite know how to be so without being a caricature. Spidey was much better at having an identity than that. 

"You're a dick," Johnny said. He polished off his hot dog and sat there with Spidey for a while, watching the lights in the city. 

They both knew New York. Somewhere in there were crimes and atrocities to stop, supervillains to fight, plots and schemes and fights and stories and truths and lies and all the other hallmarks of Humanity, but right now it was just the two of them hanging out on top of a big huge monument and not doing anything important.

"Hey Johnny?"

Johnny looked over at Spidey. "Yeah?"

"Do you trust me?"

Johnny nodded. "Of course I do. I mean, you're weird and you keep teaching me words I don't want to know, but I trust you."

"Good." Spider-Man smiled again. "I trust you, you know. And I mean, we're teammates. So I have to trust you totally, right?"

Johnny blinked. "I guess?"

Spider-Man pulled his mask off.

Johnny slapped him.

"PARKER, GODDAMMIT!" Johnny pulled in his anger, squeezed his eyes shut, and rested a hand on Lady Liberty's head. He looked over at the spikes of her crown. One of them had been blunted in some kind of superfight years ago. Johnny started to pace, but there just wasn't enough room to pace properly. He watched as Parker... Spider-Man... waited for him to finish processing. Finally, Johnny sat down. "Okay." He sucked wind for a moment. "Sorry. I mean, for the slapping. You couldn't have told me before?"

Parker pursed his lips. "I'm sorry. It's just... I fell asleep, like, _on_ you the other night, and I've been thinking about it since then... If you and I are actually that close, then you should know, right?"

Johnny glared at him. "Have you told Ben? You know, Big, Orange, and Rocky, not Old and Grandfatherly?"

"He's fifty, not eighty," Peter said. He sighed. "No, I haven't. Uncle Ben knows."

"Right." Johnny smirked. "Don't tell Ben, like, ever, and we're good."

"Why?"

Johnny rolled his eyes. "It'll mess with his head."

+----+

Daily Bugle, November 18, 2012

SPIDER-MAN, HUMAN TORCH FOIL MYSTERIOUS MASKED MENACE

In a thrilling midair combat last night, Spider-Man and the Human Torch worked together to bring down a masked man calling himself the Green Goblin. Although the supervillain ultimately escaped capture, the youthful duo successfully protected New York citizens from his attack, which involved several canisters of an unidentified chemical weapon which speculation has linked to shady Oscorp research and development projects.  
The Green Goblin, who was equipped with high-tech weapons and a rideable, jet-powered glider, was heard to threaten both young superheroes and promise revenge on them and all of New York. He is considered highly dangerous, and NYPD representatives urge anyone with information pertaining to his identity or location to call in immediately. A reward of $1500 is offered for information that leads to his capture, and Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four has additionally put forward a reward for other useful information about the Goblin.  
Those interested in claiming either reward should speak to the NYPD at their non-emergency number.


	5. Chapter 5

"I call Peter," Johnny said as soon as the teacher announced the project, and Peter sighed. Since then, it had been four days, and Peter was beginning to be seriously annoyed. Johnny had offered up his room in the Baxter Building as a place for Peter to work, had taken a few materials to Peter's house once when Peter left things at the Baxter Building, and was otherwise completely unhelpful. When Peter walked into his room after shaming Johnny into coming over to help and caught him with his hand up MJ's shirt, he dropped the petri dish full of slime mold samples on his desk and twitched half a vindictive smile when MJ jumped.

Peter turned away from his desk and walked out of the room, slamming the door shut. He trudged down the stairs and poked his head into the kitchen. "Aunt May, can I have a driving lesson?"

"Aren't your friends upstairs?" May asked.

"Nope," Peter said cheerily. "There's nobody upstairs I'd call a friend right now."

"Peter!" Aunt May shook a finger at him.

"There's the guy that's making me do all the work and the girl he's making out with," Peter said. "I won't admit to any prior friendship with either of them."

Aunt May stared at Peter, and she shook her head and pointed to the garage. Peter suspected that May was a bit of a speed demon at heart, given that the car she always chose to give him lessons in was an '87 Camaro. It sat in the garage under a tarp for years until Peter turned fifteen, and then Uncle Ben had started restoring it, so that now that Peter was learning to drive, it was ready to go. Aunt May took it to the grocery store constantly, and her runs were either suspiciously fast or far longer than just going to the store could account for. Peter wasn't quiet about leaving. He revved the engine and nodded to himself when his turned-to-eleven senses picked up MJ letting out a little yelp in the house. He pulled out of the driveway and peeled off down the road. May was gripping the oh-crap-strap a little hard, and Peter eased up on the accelerator a little. Her death grip loosened slightly.

"You know we're not gonna get hurt," Peter said. "I mean, spidey sense. I could probably drive this thing backwards through the Daytona Five Hundred and be fine."

"Please don't try," May said. "Would you care to talk about it instead of taking out your frustrations on the car?"

Peter sighed. "Johnny hasn't done anything on this project. I mean, he acts like he's real proud of himself for keeping the samples warm with his powers. That's not enough." He turned left at the next corner. In his rear-view mirror, he saw Johnny fly up above the rooftops. He glared at the flaming form in the sky and jerked the steering wheel suddenly to the right, pointing his eyes back at the road to re-center himself. Aunt May made a distressed sound.

It took about five minutes for Johnny to find and catch up to them, and Peter had to force down the impulse to try and race away from him. Johnny could break the sound barrier. It was pointless to try to outrace him. Peter went to roll down the window, but it wasn't an electric window because the stupid car was from the stupid eighties, so he was stuck rolling it down manually. It squeaked halfway through. Peter kept his eyes focused ahead of him. 

"Pete, can we talk about this?" Johnny asked.

"No," Peter growled. "You can do your own stupid project." He signaled left, and Johnny yelped and skittered back from him when he made the turn.

"Peter, don't be like this," Johnny began in a wheedling voice.

"Jonathan Storm," May snapped, "You have been taking advantage of my nephew's patience and intelligence, and I won't have it. You go back and you tell Mary Jane to go home. Right this instant, young man."

Johnny stopped and hovered. Peter kept driving.

+----+

"She dumped me!"

"I guess she has good taste," Peter shot back as he swung towards where the Fantastic Four (or were they officially the Fantastic Five now?) had been called to battle some brand new lunatic who had teamed up with some other brand new lunatic and the almost-brand-new Green Goblin. He let go of his webline and shot around the corner, catching the other side of the Chrysler Building and whirling around it to slam feetfirst into a surprised Doctor Octopus. Peter had voted for calling him Less-Cool-Spider-Man because of the eight limbs thing, which he felt was very clearly an intrusion on his intellectual property. The good Doctor yelled a few obscenities and caught the face of the building again, swinging at Peter. Peter dropped, shot a web into Doctor Octopus's metal tentacle arm thingy (supervillains always had the weirdest powers), and swung up onto the building above the creep. The Goblin's mad cackle echoed from down the street as Reed and Sue fought a running battle with him. Peter couldn't see Vulture anywhere, which was concerning, because even though being able to fly sounded like a deeply unimpressive power, Peter had seen what Johnny could do with just flight.

"Good... Spidey, for god's sake, she dumped me because you guilted her over your stupid mold!" Johnny whirled around, throwing flames up the side of the building. Peter caught a glimpse of the Vulture dodging out of the way, which explained that, but didn't help much because he was too busy with Doctor Octopus. The villain was strong enough with those tentacles to rip Peter's webs to shreds, which was deeply unfair. He finally managed to hit Ock's face and watched as the startled man lost his grip and fell. Peter winced, but Doctor Octopus managed to barely catch himself with the tentacles and was tearing at the webbing on his face when Ben arrived and started pummeling him mercilessly. "We were fine!" Johnny yelled. Peter looked around. Vulture had temporarily escaped around a corner somewhere, and Reed and Sue were funneling a moderately-screwed Goblin towards Peter and Johnny. Peter fired off a webline at the Goblin, and his spider-sense went off just as the shot hit. Goblin threw something, but Peter was turning. Johnny was falling, his flames off, towards him as Vulture dropped what appeared to be a large bucket towards them both. A spray of water slapped Peter in the face. He jumped up after Johnny and caught him, only for the bucket to carom off his head and peel them both off the wall. 

Then the pumpkin bomb went off. That solved the mystery of what Goblin had thrown. Peter tumbled through the air, his costume half-shredded and holding Johnny in a deathgrip, and he was pretty surprised when Reed managed to catch them. Ock was down for the count, but Goblin was closing in and Vulture was shouting something indistinct. Peter looked at Johnny. Blood flowed freely from a gash on the top of his head where the bucket had struck. He was breathing, and he was still warm in Peter's hands, but both of those were going to change if Peter didn't get him out. The little radio embedded in Peter's costume crackled and hissed fitfully, but apparently whatever it was trying to tell him, it was failing, because Peter couldn't make out a word of it. The damage must have been too severe.

A moment later, several bright streaks of light smacked into the Goblin, and Iron Man jetted into the fray, beating back both the Goblin and the Vulture. Peter rushed Johnny back to the Baxter Building. In the medical lab, Peter got him set up, and even though his own ears were ringing, he stood nervously by until Sue and Reed arrived to start working on him.

Somewhere in there, he passed out on the couch in the living room and he woke up feeling much better. Sue and Reed told him that Johnny was resting.

Peter went home.

+----+

"Hey, you okay, Johnny?"

Johnny gave Peter a blank look. "Who the hell are you?"

Peter rolled his eyes. "Give it a rest, man. You didn't get hit that hard."

Johnny glared for a moment, and then drew himself up haughtily. "I was hit in the head and now I have anterograde amnesia, so I don't know who you are."

"Retrograde amnesia, dingbat," Peter growled. "Anterograde is the one where you stop forming new memories."

"Right. Whatever. Point is, I have no clue who you are." Johnny sat down in his chair and looked up at the board attentively, pointedly ignoring Peter.

"Nobody is buying it," Peter said.

"I don't know who you are, and you need to stop trying to talk to me," Johnny said.

Peter ignored him. He watched the teacher step up to the board and write the day's agenda down, and then start calling people up to share their projects. Blake and his new boyfriend knocked it out of the park, naturally, and so did a bunch of other people, but when she called for Peter and Johnny, only Peter came up. "Mister Storm," the teacher prompted.

Johnny smiled dreamily. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I have no idea who that is. He sure looks like a jerk, though." Most of the class laughed at that, and Peter nearly crushed the bag with the project in it. "You see, Spider-Man let me get hit in the head, and now I have Anterograde amnesia, so I have no idea who that jerk is." The teacher was obviously trying to get control of the classroom back. Peter stared angrily at Johnny.

"The word you're looking for is retrograde, you idiot," Peter snapped. He tossed the project at Johnny. "Go ahead and present your project. I'm sure even with your amnesia, you know all about slime molds. After all, you are one."

Johnny caught the bag and the force of Peter's throw knocked him backwards out of his chair. He sprawled awkwardly on the floor while Peter sat down in surly silence.

+----+

Reed sent the new suit an infuriating week later. He made Johnny bring it, and when Johnny arrived at the front door, he was contrite and quiet. He handed over the bag with the suit. "Reed says the amnesia bit isn't funny anymore."

"So glad to know Reed thought it was funny for you to pretend you didn't know me." Peter tossed the bag down by the front door. He didn't invite Johnny in. A full week of Johnny loudly not recognizing him in school while saying rude things about the sort of person Peter "looked like" hadn't exactly left him feeling charitable towards him. 

"You made MJ break up with me!" Johnny yelled. "For your stupid slime molds!"

"You made me do all the work!" Peter pushed him backwards from the door. "Did it never occur to you that she thought you were too irresponsible to handle dating her?" He could see MJ peeking out the window of the house next door. He turned around and stormed back into the house, slamming the front door and throwing the bag with the new suit in it up the stairs. He sat down and turned on the TV and watched the angriest Spongebob rerun he had ever seen in his life.

+----+

Daily Bugle, December 3, 2012

HUMAN TORCH RECOVERS FROM INJURY

After last week's disastrous defeat at the hands of a three-man supervillain teamup the Fantastic Five collared the Vulture last night with all five members of the team playing a part. The Human Torch, who has been recovering from injuries suffered at the hands of Green Goblin and the Vulture, was in top fighting form, and even proved instrumental to the Vulture's capture.  
Last week's fight left the Torch suffering from a head injury, and many of his classmates claimed that he was suffering from mild amnesia after the injury. Mary Jane Watson, recently reported to be his girlfriend, reported that they had broken up a few days before, but expressed doubt that Storm's injuries were a sign of depression.  
"He wouldn't let that sort of thing happen just because he feels bad," Watson said when Eddie Brock caught up with her for an interview. "If johnny is hurt, then it's because he couldn't avoid it."  
The Vulture, meanwhile, has been revealed to be Adrian Toomes, an electrical engineer from the Bronx. SHIELD agents have taken him to a specialized holding facility, but are refusing to comment further.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, I don't know enough about Marvel timelines to actually definitively place this. Comics tend to be kinda jumbley anyways, so I'm mostly just using the characters as feels most logical to me.

It took almost a year and a couple of really sweet gestures to get Peter to talk to him again. Johnny had briefly gotten back together with MJ, and then Peter had, and then while Peter was sitting and talking with Ben one day he looked up at Johnny and said "she dumped me, too, so now we're even, right?"

Johnny froze with his hand half in the fridge. Was Peter actually talking to him? He forced himself to start moving again, picked up a Dr. Pepper, and opened it. He leaned back against the fridge. "I bet it wasn't over another boy's slime molds."

Ben's huge, craggy shoulders tensed with a little grating noise, but Peter sighed. "She... she didn't like the way I treat you."

Johnny snorted and sipped his drink. He sat down across from Peter. "You know what we should do now that you can drive?"

Peter gave him a wary look.

+----+

Reed sent the Spidey-mobile to a special wrecking yard that mostly got hired to destroy things that were too dangerous to leave intact. Johnny didn't think it was actually that dangerous. It had only been the one statue. In the end, he decided it was worth the lawsuit and the Daily Bugle calling them a menace, because he hadn't realized how much he had missed the sparring with Peter, that special back and forth that they set up.

He'd had a year of intermittent conversation, battles where Peter tossed smirking jokes at Ben and Reed and Sue and dark looks at Johnny. A year of sarcasm more barbed than what Spider-Man was supposed to be good for.

It was good to be back. Never mind that he'd actually spent most of the time he knew Peter fighting with him. This was how things were supposed to be.

+----+

This, Johnny decided, was not how things were supposed to be. For one thing, Charles Xavier was dead. That alone was enough to make things seriously not okay. He was undoubtedly the most boring thing at any party ever, but Johnny knew how important he was as a leader in the Mutant rights movement. Logan was having a classic freakout across the docks, roaring and making all sorts of other noises that told Johnny he would be leaving that mess to someone else. Possibly the Hulk.

The upside was that the killing of Xavier seemed to have freaked Magneto right the hell out, too, and while Logan absolutely lost his shit on the poor bastard who was throwing the energy bolts that killed Xavier in the first place, Magneto was sitting by Xavier's prone form, helmet off and head down. 

Another roar came from the general direction of Logan's hissy fit, and Johnny heard a voice mutter "Jesus, he does not do restraint."

Johnny hovered over the docks, looking around for more asses to kick, but the X-Men had swept the docks mostly clear. Sue and Reed were containing some guy who kept throwing around spits and bursts of wild energy, but they had him about as contained as he was gonna get. Spider-Man was chasing Logan, swinging under the docks like that kind of precision movement was _easy,_ even though Johnny wouldn't fly that low under the docks if he was paid for it. Ben was bounding down the street after Scarlet Witch, but he had Doctor Strange with him, so that wasn't a fight Johnny wanted any part of. It was always the weird moments in the middle of a fight that he liked, those few seconds where he had enough time to appreciate how truly weird it was that he was a living flame hovering around and trying to decide if he should attack the guy who just threw a car at his sister or let her win that fight with force fields and take the fight to the guy who had the butt-antlers.

"The last time Logan did restraint, Abraham Lincoln thanked him for his good behavior," Johnny quipped. He looked around for the source of the voice and was puzzled until a lithe figure swung smoothly up to the topside of the pier, all lean, muscled limbs and green skin. He flashed a little smirk up at Johnny. 

"What, nothing about how I'm playing with the big boys now?" The X-Man grinned and started in towards the city. Johnny set down next to him, flaming off and walking normally. "I mean, Kitty complains about your ego, like, nonstop."

Johnny laughed. "Yeah, I piss her off real bad," he said happily.

"She thinks you keep trying to sleep with her," the X-Man said.

Johnny shrugged. "She takes the flirting too seriously. I spend a lot of time with Spidey. Flirting's a defense mechanism. Dude is _relentless._ Johnny grinned. "We took him to space and he seduced an alien princess which was good because we kinda needed someone on our side, and then he almost got us all killed because he seduced the princess's brother. Largely to keep me from doing it, I think." Johnny grinned fondly at the memory. Peter had still been pointedly angry with him, but it was that special combination of petty and impressive, and besides, they'd all found out about it when they walked in on Peter in a nude cuddle with his paramour in the prince's personal zero-gravity boudoir. The prince had been totally hot, which Johnny really appreciated, and Johnny had gotten to see Peter floating in midair with his ass hanging out, and Johnny wasn't sure how, but apparently radioactive spiders made Peter even more totally hot, which he'd kinda known already, but seeing it all on display like that had been... revelatory.

It was one of Johnny's favorite memories.

"So you flirt because Spider-Man flirts?"

Johnny grinned. "Yup. I flirt 'cause Spidey flirts, and the best way to shut him down is to flirt back, harder."

"So are you and him..." the X-Man made a mildly lewd gesture.

Johnny shook his head. "Nope. I mean, I wouldn't say no if he wanted to fool around, but we have sort of a lot of... there's history there, you know."

"So are you gonna flirt with me?" the X-Man asked, glancing over at the sound of renewed combat. Beast and Colossus were tag-teaming The Blob. It was always fascinatingly gross to see The Blob fighting.

"You want me to flirt with you?" Johnny asked cheerfully. 

The X-Man grinned. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Anole. I mean, you can call me Vic, since I kinda doubt the Human Torch is gonna be a dick about the whole identity thing. I mean, your, like, best friend wears a mask all over the place."

"Vic." Johnny grabbed his hand and shook firmly, pouring a little extra heat into the handshake. Vic was strong, but in a strangely restrained way, like there was far more strength lurking somewhere in the background. "Well, you can call me Johnny."

There was a loud crash, and The Blob slammed into a building somewhere above the fifth story mark. Johnny flew up to work on containing him, and when he looked around with The Blob contained in a ring of fire (Johnny started humming the Johnny Cash song the instant he went to work on containing The Blob), Vic was crawling up the wall to investigate. "That's pretty cool," Vic said.

Johnny grinned. "Hey, do you wanna come hang out at the Baxter Building sometime?"

+----+

"Prof's not dead anymore," Vic said by way of greeting when he came into the lobby three days later. He was carrying a little paper bag and all dressed up in a nice button-up and jeans that shouldn't be allowed.

Okay, so they should be allowed, but Johnny was thinking that they probably ought to be put into a museum for their momentous achievements.

"That quick?" Johnny asked.

"To be honest, nobody on the team sounded very concerned when he died. Cyclops was all 'that didn't seem like a solid death' and Nightcrawler kept saying something about how '89 was really his best death."

"Being a superhero is fuckin' weird sometimes." Johnny led Vic to the elevator. When the door opened, it disgorged Peter, who was taking interning with Reed way too seriously. He was Spider-Man. He wasn't about to lose the intern position. He needed to be close to the Fantastic Four, and being Reeds pet prodigy was good enough for that. He shot a look at Vic when they passed each other. Vic followed him with his eyes.

"Who is that, and are there any more that someone might have left around, maybe unsupervised?" Vic asked as Peter left the building.

Johnny rolled his eyes. "That's Parker. He's Reed's intern. Trust me, you do not want that." Vic turned back to Johnny with the spot where an eyebrow would be if he had them raised quizzically. "Parker's a huge nerd, and kinda... Look, Vic, honestly? I was kinda hoping we could turn this into a date."

Vic blinked. "You were?"

"I mean... I kinda thought you were at least a little into dudes..." Johnny grinned. "And... um... you're pretty hot."

Vic froze, looking a little like a deer in the headlights. "You think I'm hot?" he squeaked.

"Yeah," Johnny said. He pointed. "Toned body like crazy, super bendy, and I really dig the scales."

Vic looked down at the bag in his hand. "I feel kinda dorky now. I brought donuts."

Johnny smirked. "Dude, you brought donuts? Forget the dating, I'm just gonna skip right to the proposal."

Vic smiled at him.

+----+

Johnny would never admit it to any other lovers, but the hottest thing he'd ever done was the first time Vic pinned him to the ceiling to have sex with him. He had to wonder what it would be like with someone who had the strength to keep it going for longer, to really make it stick.

With Peter.

+----+

Daily Bugle, November 8, 2013

HUMAN TORCH HOT FOR MUTANT RIGHTS

After last month's shocking coming out, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch announced yesterday that he was contributing all earnings from his recent film debut in _The Dancing Lights_ to Charles Xavier's Foundation for Disadvantaged Mutants.  
Storm, who is dating the Mutant and minor member of the X-Men team Victor "Anole" Borkowski, said he couldn't sit by and do nothing while innocent people suffered. "Gay rights are important, and I'm still going to fight for them," Storm told media representatives, "but the plight of Mutants is just as important. For everyone who can do what Victor or Charles Xavier can do, there are dozens of Mutants who've gained only a strange appearance or an inconvenient new sense, and we have to work to stop the abuse of anyone with the X-Gene."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm pretty sure Anole and Johnny Storm have never been teenagers at the same time but   
> A: I really like Anole's design and think he's generally pretty cool  
> B: he can wall-crawl. That last pre-newspaper bit had to happen.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have officially given up on coordinating timelines. The next Marvel thing I write will have fewer characters.

It was, Peter decided after giving the matter due thought, both gross and hot. Now that Johnny was getting laid regularly, he was easier to be around, particularly when he had that warm glow that came from being freshly fucked.

Johnny Storm, freshly fucked, was probably Peter's favorite person. When he sat in the living room with Reed, chatting about inconsequentials like how stupid string theory was and how many uses there really were for the Higgs Boson, and Johnny breezed in from a session of grunting and moaning with Vic trailing after him and still giving Peter those bedroom eyes of his, Peter thought there was nothing better in the world to look at.

Johnny might have spent a week loudly alienating him, and he might be a narcissistic dickhead, but he was still drop-dead gorgeous, and Peter had never seen anyone more beautiful than Johnny in the precious minutes between when he got properly fucked and when he started getting his wits back enough to be snotty.

It was gross, too, though. Mostly because Vic delighted in crawling up the walls, and Johnny loved to get dragged up there with him. It was kinda cute when they just cuddled up on the ceiling (Peter wished it was him and not Vic sometimes), but then sometimes...

"Aw, come on!" Peter stepped back out of the living room. Vic carefully detached one hand from the ceiling, and Johnny disentangled himself from his boyfriend and let Vic lower him gently to the ground. Peter pointed to Johnny's shirt, which had wound up on top of the couch.

"Hey, Pete," Johnny said, grabbing the shirt. Vic let go of the ceiling with both feet and dropped smoothly until he was hanging off the ceiling by one hand, strong and effortless. Peter resisted the urge to take his shoes off and go pull Vic off the ceiling.

"Don't you..." Peter pointed at the floor beneath where they had been making out. "You got drool on the carpet, you awful, disgusting weirdo."

"Sorry." Johnny grinned. "He sorta has a fifteen foot prehensile tongue, so that happens sometimes."

Peter raised an eyebrow. Vic smiled and stuck his tongue out. And out. And out. Peter poked out a hand and caught it before the Mutant could react to the unexpected move. "Put it back, Simmons. If I see this thing out in the living room again, I'm tying it in a knot around Johnny. You think I can't, but I'm Reed's assistant for a reason. I will find a way." He let go of Vic's tongue. "Seriously. That's gross." He wiped off his hand on the back of Ben's favorite recliner. "And stop making out on the ceiling in here. There's a couch. Nobody needs you two dripping makeout juice on them." He flopped down in his preferred spot on the loveseat.

Johnny put his shirt back on and headed over to Peter while Vic dropped to the floor behind him. "I'm sorry, Peter. I didn't know it was bothering you." He sank into the seat next to Peter. Vic made an irritated face. There wasn't room for him on the loveseat next to Johnny. Peter could have moved over to let him squeeze in, but he didn't feel like it.

"Johnny, I made a retching noise, like, every time I caught you two grossing it up in here."

Johnny smirked. "You wouldn't think it was gross if you were in his position," he said, pointing to his boyfriend.

"Uh, right here," Vic said.

"That's beside the point," Peter said. "And I can't stick to the ceiling."

Vic sat sullenly on the big sofa. "Look, Peter, I'm sorry. Can we just leave it at that?"

Johnny held up a hand. "This is important, Vic. Pete and I need to get along."

Vic pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine."

"I'd just prefer to not know enough about your sex life to picture you getting banged up on the ceiling." Peter peered over at Vic. There were several ways he could continue that sentence, but all of them would probably end with Vic angry. "Look, he's right. Go. Pay attention to your boyfriend. Just do it... not in here so much." He smiled winningly at Vic. "Or I'll tie his tongue to a lamp."

+----+

Peter paced back and forth across the ceiling. Some days, your biggest problem was a twelve-foot dingus in a rhino costume. Some days, your problem was a patently absurd chemical formula that should have been assigned to a post-doc, or possibly a supercomputer. Instead of those reasonable options, it had been assigned to Peter. The little warning at the back of his skull buzzed, and Peter dropped down smoothly to the floor, hoping his hair wasn't too ridiculous. At least he had a partner who understood this kind of thing. That was what advanced science courses did for him. Gwen Stacy came into his room, leaving the door half-open. 

Peter wasn't completely delusional. He knew that he had a major, possibly-eternal crush on Johnny. Johnny, however, was with his X-Man, and that was fine. It was just fine. Even if he had spent the last three months transparently dating a guy who did the same wallcrawling thing as Peter, but wasn't as good at it.

Because Johnny wasn't available, and clearly didn't feel the same way about Peter that Peter did about him, he wasn't going to sit and pine away.

Instead, he was going to lean over Gwen's shoulder as she spread her work materials out and say, quietly, "you know, all work and no play makes Pete a dull boy."

"This is play for you, weirdo," Gwen said. "Focus. You can get all flirty later."

"Mm..." Peter picked up a pencil from his desk and started making notes where Gwen had been doing her work on the formula. "You know, you have a special kind of insight. I mean, I understand all this, but you can kind of... I don't know, I guess you just see the whole molecule."

"I still don't quite get it," Gwen said. "I mean, it's obviously a single molecule, but I have no idea where the link is. It's not a hydrogen bond, it's not a covalent bond, it's not an ionic bond."

Peter looked at the sketch, tapped the pencil, and said "what about dispersive adhesion?"

"Disper... Peter, this is the real world!"

Peter sighed. "No, no, I get it, it's just... look. I wouldn't have spotted this if you didn't draw everything out, but I made something like this with Reed once." He circled part of the molecule Gwen had taken up an entire page diagramming. "That's, like, eight atoms away from being Spider-Man's web fluid. That stuff is basically a molecule-sized version of a scissorlift. It's mechanical action on a molecular scale. What are the electrostatic forces doing here?"

Gwen leaned back, whistling softly. "They're trying to twist the whole thing."

"Yeah." Peter grinned. "Maybe it dissolves in alcohol because it's not actually one molecule. If that's a dispersive adhesion that twists one molecule in under the other, it'd behave like a single molecule right up until the alcohol starts working..." he quested around the diagram for a moment. "There. There's our endpoints." He drew a line between a sodium atom and a vanadium atom. "Introduce alcohol here, and it starts unraveling. Look." he pointed up and down the chain, tapping his eraser on each atom that would be involved in the collapse of the molecule. "You get heat, a little fizzing from the nitrogen, and the whole process takes..." he leaned back, muttering numbers under his breath. "About the right amount of time. Plus, this way, you get the result without the whole thing needing to be heated to seven thousand degrees. Also, nothing blows up."

Gwen stared at him. "You are freaky, you know that?"

Peter grinned. "You draw really good molecules. You wanna make out?"

"Peter Parker, are you turned on by my molecules?"

Peter grinned. I'm turned on by all of you, Gwendy."

"I told you not to call me that," Gwen said.

Peter smiled and rested his jaw on her shoulder. "Yeah, but you're fun when we're fighting a little."

Gwen turned, and her lips brushed against Peter's cheek. "Supergenius," she said.

"Just a regular old genius," Peter replied, and he turned to meet her lips.

+----+

Johnny flamed off as he tumbled in through the window. He tucked himself around a smaller passenger, not a child but definitely on the small end of mostly-grown sizes. Peter scrambled and yelped, pulling himself up from where he was leaning back. He knew there was no danger, his spider sense hadn't gone off at all as Johnny approached, but he still had no idea who Johnny's new friend was.

Also, Peter was in his underwear because he'd slept on Johnny's floor after Johnny called him for a midnight Halo and junk food marathon. He didn't think the stranger would necessarily form the best opinion of him from seeing a dude who was not Johnny's boyfriend hanging around in Johnny's bedroom wearing nothing but a pair of Human Torch boxer shorts (Peter checked himself over and winced) that had been poorly made and were giving the world at large an annoyingly good view of his junk.

The stranger stood up, and Peter would always hate Johnny a little bit for the fact that when he met Hiro Takachiho, he was in his underwear. One of the few prodigies more prodigyish than Peter, stupid famous in science circles, and god dammit all, super danged cute.

And there was Peter, involuntarily showing the goods to his science-crush du jour.

Peter sat down, hard, and said, in halting Japanese, what he hoped was _"Good morning, mister Takachiho. What brings you here?"_

The foreign hero blinked and replied in English "you have a very bad accent and you were very rude to that poor greeting. Why are you in the Human Torch's bedroom?"

Peter blushed. "You know, wild orgy last night, gonna go rob a bank together later. The days are just packed."

Takachiho sighed and moved a little further into the room. "You must be Spider-Man."

Peter's jaw dropped. Johnny unhelpfully crowed "busted!" behind him and Takachiho grinned. 

"Johnny," Peter said imploringly. He didn't whine it. Even though he wanted to. Because he was a mature adult.

"Relax, everything's fine," Johnny said reassuringly. "Hiro's team is gonna go retrieve his suit and his giant scary robot. They've got Reed, Sue, and the half of Ben that's on our side of the portal. I'm pretty sure the X-Men have somebody that can save Ben if he gets cut in half, too."

Peter turned on his heel and marched over to Johnny's dresser. He pulled out the priciest-looking pair of pants he could find and put them on. "Do they need help?"

Takachiho shook his head. "Baymax and the others can do this. They said I should stay behind, and you weren't supposed to try to help."

"Translation: they need help, but they'll be really angry if we're the ones who help." Peter sighed. "Fine." he sat on the other side of Takachiho from Johnny and offered his hand. "I'm Pete. I invented web-fluid and last week I helped Reed Richards fix Tony Stark's repulsors after Stark ballsed them up so bad they were trying to create tiny black holes. Are science-bros yet?"

Takachiho blinked rapid-fire for a minute, then grinned and shook Peter's hand. "If you can show me the Fantastic Four's famous lab, then yes."

Peter looked up at Johnny. They grinned at each other, and then simultaneously at Takachiho.

+----+

"Peter?"

Peter grinned and pushed off of the wall. He caught Takachiho's hand as he went by, slapped the next wall he came to, and pulled the other prodigy up so he could get a grip on a pipe in the lab's ceiling. "Yeah?"

"If Mister Reed Richards does not kill us, I am inviting you to Tokyo. I want to see what happens."

"Death and destruction," Johnny yelled from somewhere below them. 

Peter yanked fruitlessly at the weird biomechanical goo that was trying to affix him to the ceiling. He crawled over to the thing that had started pouring it out, and grinned. "Takachiho--"

"Call me Hiro, please."

"Right. Hiro, then. You still have a pen on you, right?"

Hiro looked puzzled for a bare instant.

"You're really going to ask for an autograph now?" Johnny yelled. There was a note of panic in his voice. "Your stupid grey goo fuckup is trying to eat me!"

"I am going to throw this pen at you," Hiro shouted to him. "Incinerate it, count to ten, and then burn as bright as you can."

He tossed the pen. Johnny blew it up and followed his instructions. The way his superhot light coruscated through the little cloud of ink particles and filled the room and forced back the goo was pretty impressive, and soon it was back to the box it had come from. Peter ran over as soon as he and Hiro dropped to the floor, slammed the box shut, and locked it, replacing it where it had been. Johnny sagged, and Peter turned around just as the door opened. Reed was arguing with Ben while a seriously uncanny-valley android roughly the size of Utah followed them.

"I promise you, Ben, there's been no ill effects. The portal wasn't a quantum-integrated object, so technically, you were never even nearly bisected." Reed looked up and blinked. "Oh. Peter! Showing our guest the lab?"

"Yeah," Johnny said. "I guess you guys got his evil clone?"

Reed nodded, glanced suspiciously at the box of murder-goo, and then smiled. "Yes, we did. Mister Takachiho, your armor is being repaired by Tony Stark personally. Please, Peter, carry on. It's good for you to teach people about the lab sometimes. You know what they say: you don't know something until you've taught it."

Peter grinned at Hiro and held out a fist. Hiro smirked and fist-bumped him. "Science bros," Peter hissed happily.

+----+

"So does Gwen know you flirt with all the science boys?" Johnny asked a couple of nights later, after Peter had seen Hiro and the rest of his (slightly terrifying) team off in costume.

"I think she assumes," Peter said, "But after that time she caught me changing to go fight Doc Ock, her biggest issue is you."

Johnny grinned and reached out to tug on the bottom of Peter's mask. "Well, you and me do kinda get each other."

"We get each other like we get the common cold, but yeah." Peter smiled fondly over at Johnny. He flopped back on top of the Statue of Liberty's crowned head, and Johnny flopped back with him. Peter stuck out a hand and pulled gently at a loose lock of Johnny's hair. "You're a pretty good cold."

Johnny smiled. He rolled onto his side and smiled brightly at Peter. "I can't believe we spent so long working against each other when we can accomplish so much more delicious evil together. We almost destroyed Reed's lab. Twice. And then Hiro fixed it both times, which was awesome."

Peter laughed. He pulled off his mask. "Hiro is pretty cool like that."

"You have a crush," Johnny teased. Peter rolled his eyes.

"Of course I do. I mean, he's cute, yeah, but he's like, a minor science god. He's my age and he's outstripped Tony Stark for actual innovations in artificial intelligence, psuedostable information structures, and mechanical design. He invented a new kind of joint, Johnny. Literally invented a new way to do one of the most fundamental things humans can do." Peter smirked. "I'd be crazy to not have a crush."

Johnny grinned. "You're pretty cute when you're crushing super-hard on someone." Peter rolled his eyes, but he let the warmth of the compliment flood through him. "I'm serious," Johnny insisted. "You already kinda have a nerd-chic thing going on, and then you smile like that and it's like you're waiting in line for the new Trek Wars movie or something."

"Trek Wars?" Peter grinned. "You watched Empire with me and quoted every line right with me just the other night. You did the Chewbacca roars!"

"No." Johnny rolled again onto his back. "I'm not a nerd. Like you."

Peter sat up and scooted closer to fix Johnny with a wide-eyed stare. "Join us, Johnny. Become a nerd," he singsonged in a too-high voice. "One of us. One of us. One of us. One of us!"

Johnny surged upright and grabbed Peter, pushing him over onto his back. Peter took in a sharp breath, and Johnny had him pinned to the top of the statue, so suddenly that Peter couldn't even properly give it thought.

Johnny was quiet and intense, staring into his eyes.

+----+

Daily Bugle, February 14, 2014

FANTASTIC FIVE FIGHT FOREIGN FREEBOOTER

The much anticipated visit to New York of the Japanese Big Hero 6 superteam was interrupted last week by a highly public attack by Doctor Octopus which seriously endangered the out-of-uniform tech genius Hiro Takachiho. Although Doctor Octopus was foiled, reports today indicate that the Fantastic Five laid a trap for a suspected accomplice to the nefarious superscientist.  
Just before the Big Hero 6 team left, an attempted attack was apparently swiftly put down by the actions of Spider-Man and the Human Torch, who took the malevolent clone of Hiro Takachiho into custody and sent the foreign criminal to be properly contained by an Avengers team already standing by.  
The latest example of sterling teamwork from the Fantastic Five has gained them a following overseas, and rumor insists that several fan clubs have already formed in Japan for all members of the Five individually and for the group as a whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think my timeline is basically just shifting Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four way later in the timeline than they actually are and then minorly dicking around with the timing of other things so that all the most interesting characters are there.
> 
> Also, I straight-up forgot that Hiro was a Marvel character until he turned up while I was looking for superscientists for Peter to have a science-boner for.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was interesting to write.

An ouroborus of flame hovered over Johnny's open hand while Vic lounged on the bed. "I'm a little confused," Vic said. "Johnny, you ask me to come over, and then we don't do anything and you just sulk."

Johnny twisted the serpent into a figure-eight, spinning it freely around his hand. "Sulk sad. Sulk turn blue and huge and be pissy at whole city."

"Johnny," Vic growled, "you're acting weird."

Johnny sighed. "I'm sorry. I just... Kinda needed my boyfriend."

Vic rolled closer and wrapped himself around Johnny. Johnny stiffened and half-twitched away from him. "If you needed your boyfriend, why are you acting like you don't want to touch me?"

A flash of Peter swinging away from the ferry rolled through Johnny's mind. Red and blue uniform and weblines, bright, armored fabric and a tension in his posture that Johnny was certain no one else could have spotted. A tension Johnny put there.

Vic laid a hand against Johnny's back. He felt himself tense up, but he let Vic slowly soothe him down until he was lying on his back on the bed with Vic's hands and tongue roaming around his naked body, and it was good, it was incredible, and for a while, he lost himself in it.

+----+

Benjamin Parker was sitting in the living room. Johnny stopped short at the door. Ben Parker was sitting in the living room, perfectly at ease in Reed's favorite chair, speaking eagerly with _his_ Ben, who laughed knowingly and cut a glance at Johnny, pointing over at him. Parker smiled and waved Johnny over. "Come sit down, son," he said.

Johnny liked Peter's uncle, insofar as he'd ever spoken at length to him. But Ben Parker had only been to the Baxter Building twice, and neither time had made him seem particularly comfortable. That said, he was Facebook friends with Ben Grimm and always commented something dryly hilarious on whatever new science thing Reed posted, and he liked to post moody black and white pictures of Muppets in reaction to literally anything Johnny said, which was both confusing and endearing. Johnny knew where Peter got his sense of humor, and where he got a bit of his intelligence.

He just... didn't seem to really belong in the Baxter Building, in Johnny's living room. Johnny sat down. Parker grinned at him, and oh god no, he had Peter's smile. "Son, I've been wondering what's gotten to Peter lately. The last few days, he's been just hiding in his room. You know, he broke up with that nice Gwen Stacy. No warning. They'd only been dating for a few weeks, and I think she knew about his..." Parker made the webshooter gesture.

"He just misses his science-boyfriend," Johnny mumbled. "You know he spent, like, two days solid hanging out with Hiro."

Parker shook his head and Ben poked at Johnny. "You miss him, too," he ground out, gesturing with one huge orange finger. "You ain't broke up with your boyfriend and locked yourself in your room fer a week."

"I..." Johnny leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. "I dunno. Maybe Pete's hung up on Hiro for real?"

"Maybe," Parker said. "I'd like you to go talk to Gwen. I couldn't get the story out of her, and May is sure she knows. I'm just worried about Peter. If it's not something I need to know, don't tell me anything, but please make sure he's okay." Parker was gruff and stern, the concern for his nephew written plainly on his face.

Johnny thought privately that there was nothing he'd like to do less than have a heart-to-heart with Gwen Stacy.

+----+

Reason number one for Johnny to stay away from Gwen Stacy was apparently that she had a killer left cross. After she hit him hard a few times, she marched angrily away from him. Johnny followed. 

"Gwen! Gwen, please, just talk to me!"

Gwen stopped abruptly. Her perky hair bobbed and bounced around her face and she whirled in place, clutching her tablet to her chest and glaring at Johnny. "Give me one good reason I should talk to you," she bit out at him.

"Because I have no idea what Peter told you and he gets martyrful enough when he's happy. I don't know what's going on in his head, and he won't talk to me, and it's scary." Johnny sighed. "Please, Gwen. You don't have to like me, but I need you to talk to me."

Gwen huffed and pointed to the nearest little alcove off to the side of the hallway. Twenty minutes after the last bell, there weren't so many people in the school anymore, and they had enough privacy that they could talk quietly about what exactly had gone on. Once they were alone, Gwen leaned back against the wall. "He told me you kissed him."

Johnny cringed a bit. "That was true."

"He said he kissed you back."

Johnny waggled a hand uncertainly in the air "Kinda. He obviously felt pretty bad about it."

"You have a boyfriend." Gwen stood up straight, jabbing a finger into Johnny's chest. "Don't you feel bad about lying to him?"

Johnny blushed. "I... I've been trying to figure out how to talk to him about it." He shook his head. "Would you tell me what else he said?"

"He said he didn't feel like he could be true." She turned to stare at her shoes. "He said he might just be gay." Gwen scoffed. "Because of you."

"Just..." Johnny shook his head. "I've seen him watch Basic Instinct. Trust me, he's not 'just gay' any more than I am."

Gwen blinked, rapid-fire, and a few tears slipped down her cheeks. She looked away from Johnny. "I thought he and I really had something."

"Maybe you will," Johnny said. "Someday. I think Pete's just... He's a little scrambled."

"We'll never have something. Not really." Gwen sighed. "He left me for you when you were still dating someone else. You can't even stop yourself from cheating on your boyfriend. Obviously he's more in love with you than he'll ever be with me."

Johnny put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't abandon him completely? Please, for me? He won't talk to me. Don't take him back if you don't want to, but... he needs a friend like you. Someone who gets all the stupid science stuff and doesn't put on high-tech hyperspandex and go beat up criminals."

+----+

"Hey, who took this?" Ben slid the Daily Bugle into the center of the table. He tapped the picture on the front page. Spider-Man, swinging away from the Baxter Building, pacing the Fantasti-car for one of Reed's urban movement lessons.

Johnny frowned. From the angle, it had to have been taken from one of the big windows of the Baxter Building itself.

"Hmm?" Reed stretched out his neck to look down over the table at the paper. "Oh, good, it turned out!"

"What turned out?" Sue asked, sitting down as Reed plopped a plate full of pancakes onto the table in front of her. There was a little syrup heart drawn on top of the stack. Johnny made a gagging noise. "Who took that?" Sue asked. "That's definitely from in the building, and look, it's too high up to be one of the residents on the lower floors."

"Peter took it," Reed said. "Didn't I tell you? We've been working on a way for him to make a little money off of Spider-Man." Reed put another stack of pancakes down in front of Ben, this one with a smiley face drawn on it. "That was a test for a camera that auto-tracks him. The idea is that he can take pictures of himself and then sell them to newspapers. I've already put together a press release--"

"Reed Nathaniel Richards!" Sue jumped up.

"--for you to look at, Sue, honestly, I'm one of the world's leading minds. Peter and I were thinking we could put out the word that he met Spider-Man while he was interning here and Spider-Man asked him to be his official photographer. As far as the papers are concerned, it would be Peter accepting the payment and then splitting it with Spider-Man."

Johnny thought that over for a moment. "That's actually pretty clever. If Spidey has a predictable schedule and gets warning most of the time when there's about to be a fight, it would make sense for his photographer to run off whenever Spidey's doing something weird."

"I'd like to think the two smartest people in any given room where average intelligence falls below the ninetieth percentile can come up with a plausible lie for the press." Reed preened a little, the white at his temples looking unusually dignified. "What do you think, Ben, Sue?"

Ben frowned. "I think that's a pretty good idea, but it sounds like you're really in for the long haul on keeping Pete's identity a secret."

"Which isn't bad," Sue was quick to point out. "I'll take a look at that press release."

"Yeah," Johnny said, inspecting the picture. It was a really good picture. "And tell Peter he got a great shot. It really showcases his ass."

+----+

"So you made out with Spider-Man?" Vic's face was cold. "I thought you'd at least go for Parker. I mean, they told me you were gonna cheat on me, but I thought you'd at least go for a better guy."

Johnny blanched. "Hey, Spidey's a good guy," he objected.

Vic rolled his eyes. "Except for the boyfriend stealing and the way he acts like he's god's gift to superheroes. Can you imagine if he'd yelled at us for making out on the ceiling? I mean, Parker was pissy, but at least he stopped at threatening to tie my tongue to shit. Spider-Man would have just thrown me out the window."

"He wouldn't have thrown you out the window," Johnny began, but Vic growled sharply.

"You're defending him to me! Do you even care about our relationship?"

Johnny bit back four separate replies, but the last catty thing Peter had said about them bubbled to the front of his mind and tumbled out of his mouth. "The part with the fucking on the ceiling, or the part where you talk about sports I don't care for?"

Vic stood up and stormed out of Johnny's room. He slammed the door, hard, and a few minutes later, Peter came in, looking crestfallen.

"Was that because of me?" he asked from his spot by the door. He refused to come further into the room. Right at the moment, Johnny really wanted to drag him to the bed and forget their troubles for a few minutes, but he knew it would end in tears for them both.

"That was because of _me,"_ Johnny scolded. "I'm the one who kissed you. I'm the one who told Vic. I'm the one who stepped past..." Johnny swallowed what he wanted to do. He knew for a fact that if he told Peter how he lit up every room he was in, how Johnny always wanted him at least a little, that if he told him... Peter would self-destruct. Maybe there would be a time. Maybe there would be a place. But not here. Not now. "Past the limits of our relationship. I'm sorry Peter. I shouldn't have done it. It was just... the setting. You know. Lady Liberty, with that gorgeous view of the skyline, and all alone..." He could see a war between hope and quiet, stealthy anguish on Peter's face. "I mean, we probably just shouldn't go up there anymore. I'd probably go a little misty-eyed for _Reed_ up there, it's no wonder I couldn't stop myself with you."

He watched Peter's heart break a little. Peter walked out.

+----+

Gwen slapped Johnny the day the trip was arranged. Johnny was pretty sure she was always going to hate him. Still, she probably had a bit of a point.

"You get everything, don't you?" Gwen growled. "I could have gone with him. Now you get to go to _fucking Tokyo_ with Peter to go hang out with a bunch of scientist superheroes. You might as well take him to Paris and hit all the sights with him. You get a _fucking_ romantic getaway with him, and I get to watch you two hook up on international news."

Johnny squeezed his eyes shut. the place would be full of reporters and big, flashy science things, and there would be interviews and panels and everything else. Hell, Johnny was scheduled to give an interview to some society paper that wanted to talk to a whole bunch of 'American perspectives on Superheroes.'

It would be easy to not get too close to Peter, right? 

He could just throw him at Hiro.

Right?

+----+

Daily Bugle, May 2nd, 2014

SUPERHEROES MINGLE IN TOKYO, THWART DOCTOR DOOM  
(article by Peter Parker, photojournalist and Superhero liaison)

The first day of the International Symposium on Superscience concluded three hours early following an attack by Victor Von Doom. The attack, which involved several robotic attackers Johnny Storm cheerfully dubbed "Doombots," was launched on the convention center while Doctor Reed Richards was giving a speech on his famous unstable molecule technology. Fortunately, while the assault was sudden and powerful, the various costumed heroes in the convention center were more than a match for the robotic assault.  
Particularly helpful were Iron Man, Hiro Takachiho, Spider-Man, and The Thing, who worked together to scramble the signals between the Doombots. In response to the attack, Doctor Richards has changed the subject of a panel tomorrow from an in-depth discussion of atypical neurology in supergenius-certified people to an open discussion of priorities in international superpowered cooperation.  
"I don't believe the Big Hero 6 would have been able to fight this threat alone, and it's only our luck that Doom's target was so poorly chosen," Richards said when asked to comment for the Daily Bugle.  
"I've been pushing for more international cooperation for years," Tony Stark said in a statement to press several hours after the attack. "The Canadian teams will sometimes work with American ones, but it's almost always the Avengers. Honestly, we barely even cooperate across large nations like the US. We need to network better. Networking made Stark Industries a leader in the world's economy, and it will make us all more effective as superpowered defenders."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Johnny... Johnny, no. You're supposed to kiss him! That's how this works. There's a big terrible angst, and then you kiss Peter, and everything's better.
> 
> You...
> 
>  
> 
> You're not gonna...
> 
> Fine. But you better make this better soon :P


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be one of two chapters today, depending how I feel later.

"I'm going to die." Peter looked over the edge of the huge golden sculpture they were standing on. "I'm going to lose my grip on this slippery weirdness, and I'm going to fall to my death. The headlines will be humiliating. 'Spider-Man Dies of Fall From Golden Turd,' they'll say."

"I'm so glad you think my home has such embarrassing landmarks," Hiro said smirkingly from beside him, where he was crouched in his (totally cool) retro armored suit. There was a fin on top of his helmet. He looked like he was about to climb into a starfighter go fight an evil empire. Peter wanted a fin.

"Hey, I'm from New York. One of our most famous parks is its very own toilet joke."

"I happen to really like Flushing Meadows," Johnny said. He was hovering over their heads, having bluntly refused to be seen standing on something that even the locals called "The Golden Turd." He looked longingly at the Tokyo Skytree. "I look really impressive kicking ass in the State Pavilion. You remember the time we took down Sandman there?"

"I think the fight where Ben trapped Whiplash in the Unisphere was better," Peter said, "but dude, it's still called Flushing Meadows. I used to ask Aunt May if we could visit by going psssshhhhh-gurgle and looking hopeful."

Johnny shrugged. "Whatever. Look, I'm gonna ditch you losers and go hang out with Iron Heart. I hear she knows how to choose a good gargoyling spot."

Peter grinned. "Oh, man, does she ever. You've seen that picture of her looking all awesome on Saint Mary of the Angels, right?"

"Aw, dude, that picture is awesome." Johnny started flying away. "You boys have fun now."

Peter smiled and watched Johnny go until he rounded a building and vanished from sight. "You have feelings for him," Hiro said.

Peter shrugged. "He doesn't really feel the same way. I mean, like, he's obviously attracted to me."

"Because who wouldn't be?" Hiro walked around the bottom of the giant sculptural topper to the Asahi Beer Hall, his boots clanking against the metal shell of the thing when he walked and came up on Peter's other side. "I mean, you're so charming, with your Human Torch underpants and constantly getting in trouble." He threw himself off the edge of the building, letting out a whoop as he fell until he extended one arm and suddenly accelerated towards a tall building in the general direction he'd pointed. Peter swung over towards him, watching as Hiro switched to the next building in line. There was no line, but he moved like he was webslinging. It was pretty impressive, since Peter's spider sense was what let him get around so reliably with such a mildly absurd technique. They were at Cocoon Tower twenty minutes later. With so many superheroes in the city, it had taken an effort to find a big impressive building without anybody already scanning the area atop it.

Hiro scaled the building about the same way Peter did, although he stuck to the big white crossbeams, and by the time he got to the top, Peter was already sitting there, doing his best to not look overly smug. "Magnetic distance grapples in the gauntlets?"

Hiro blushed softly and reached up with the hand not planted on one of the crossbeams to rub at the back of his neck. "What you do looked like fun. And you looked cool doing it."

"Well, the hovering is pretty cool. What's the effective range on those?" Peter reached out to grab Hiro's free hand and inspect the gauntlet, turning it over and over.

"Only about eighty meters. I wanted to be able to get to the top of the Statue of Liberty with them next time I saw you. I just thought that would be in New York." Hiro shrugged. "I admire you. You have your own powers, and you still keep doing the science. I invent things to keep up because all my friends can knock down a building with their bare hands."

"I bet that's not why you started," Peter said with a smile.

Hiro grinned. "Baymax was a class project. I designed the battlesuit when I was five. I built the CCN so I could play video games in any room in the house."

"You do it for the joy of it," Peter said. "That's important. I think..." he sighed. "Reed invents for pleasure a lot more than he does for work. He's one of the happiest people I've ever met. People who do science because they need it to save the world, like Tony Stark and his crowd, they're just not as happy. You made a new thing to do something you thought was cool. That's a pretty cool superpower, Hiro."

Hiro smiled at that. "You might actually be cooler than Honey Lemon. And she invented an interdimensional super-purse."

"I could've done that," Peter said in a mildly petulant tone. "I'd just look ridiculous with a purse."

+----+

"So, son, are you enjoying your romantic getaway with the Human Torch?" Ben grinned at Peter. He had a habit of looking at the camera on his Skype calls, which did a lot to create the illusion of eye contact. "Are you going to have a boyfriend when you come back?"

"Uncle Ben," Peter sighed. "It's a symposium."

Aunt May poked her head into view. "Oh, Peter, it's a symposium in a faraway, exotic city full of beautiful sights and fascinating attractions."

"Also called a romantic getaway," Ben's grin became a smirk. May was bustling around behind him, poking at a pot on the stove before she came over and sat next to him. "I like that boy, you know. He's nice, once you get past how much of a jerk he is."

"Only you could say something like that and mean it," May said fondly.

"I can say that stuff and mean it, too," Peter objected.

"You should tell Johnny how you feel," May said. "You know how much we love him. And Peter... we know how much you love him."

Peter gave a sad look to the floor. "Yeah, I know."

"Hey," May said. "Chin up, buckaroo. You still have that new camera?"

Peter nodded. "I haven't taken it out spideying or anything."

"Go get some pictures," May said. "Take some of Johnny. Let him know you like the way he looks."

+----+

There were nearly a dozen gossip magazines represented, and Peter couldn't help feeling a little isolated by the fact that he was the only person taking pictures for an American newspaper. He clutched the new camera Aunt May had bought him for Christmas to his chest and watched as the reporters took turns asking questions. Peter mostly made up exclusives between himself and Spider-Man for J. Jonah Jameson's mildly smug reading pleasure. He'd tried to interview Johnny once, and gotten nothing but sarcastic answers, and while Sue could give a good interview, Ben was too blunt and Reed too distracted to make an exclusive feel good.

Their questions were mostly being fed through a harried-looking interpreter, who fired off another one after getting the reporters to let one person speak for a moment. "Do you have a favorite teammate?"

Johnny looked around the little press-room at the convention center. It was after hours for the symposium, which really just meant that the center was buzzing about things besides science. He chose a reporter to focus on and answered "Spider-Man. I mean, I know how that sounds, like I hate my family, but I really love my family. It's just that they're my family. I kinda have to love them. Even Ben. Even when he eats cabbage and gets farty." Johnny grinned over at Peter. "Spider-Man is someone I like for who he is, instead of for who he is to me."

The questions rose up into another little crescendo of sound, and the interpreter managed to shush everyone until there was only one voice going. She listened carefully to Japanese too fast for Peter to follow properly (he decided to double down on his lessons, because even though he'd been trying, Hiro's accent had gone from thick to almost gone in only a few months, and Peter had to ask people at shops to slow down five times per conversation. He was _losing_ and it was _embarrassing._

"It must be hard living with your whole team. Have you ever gotten very angry and done something you regretted?"

Johnny nodded. "Yeah. I uh..." He looked over at Peter, a frown sketched across his face. "I told Sue she got to turn invisible because she's a coward once." He blushed bright red while the interpreter tamed the reporters and finally isolated a question again. Apparently someone from a rival magazine was determined to one-up the sensational questions and scandal, because the next one was a doozie.

"What's the pettiest thing you've ever done to someone you loved?"

"I tied all of Reed's fingers in knots while he was asleep in the living room." Johnny looked over towards Peter again. The humor of the anecdote had obviously knocked down his embarrassment from the previous question, but color still darkened his cheeks, and a vaguely devastated look was fixed on his face. He turned to look at the ceiling. "That was a heck of a scolding from Sue." Johnny turned his head towards the exit. It was a good angle, and Peter snapped a picture. "I have to get going, folks, but it's been fun. Good luck!"

Johnny hurried out, and Peter followed him. "You have no poker face," Peter said. "That last question... what the hell did you do that makes you feel that bad?"

Johnny shook his head. "None of your business. Drop it, Pete."

"I will," Peter said. "But you better hope Jameson never gets ahold of any video from that. He'll latch onto that question, and you'll never hear the end of it. You looked like someone shot your dog. You looked like your grandma killed your dog, made a gun out of its bones, and used that to shoot your other dog, then told you she did it because you're a bad grandson."

Johnny snorted. "It'll never come up again. Come on, Peter. Let's go hang out with Hiro and Honey Lemon."

Peter snorted. "You just wanna hit on her."

+----+

"I can't believe he got her to go with him," Hiro muttered mutinously. They'd gotten a good spot on top of the Skytree this time. It was kind of fun hanging out in a city as full of superheroes as Tokyo was at the moment. A mugger had been interrupted by Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Captain America, and sixteen other heroes from around the world the night before. It made for a peculiar kind of freedom. 

"Johnny likes to leave a place with the hottest boy and the hottest girl on his arms." Peter grinned. "He came to the homecoming dance with Flash Thompson and an actual supermodel once. I still have no idea how he got Flash to come with him."

"Probably the supermodel," Hiro said.

Peter grinned. "Probably." He lounged back against the antenna. He'd discovered a few weeks earlier that he could stick to things with his back, too, and so he was lounging about ten feet up while Hiro sat on the edge of the upper observation platform, his legs dangling over the side. Peter sucked in a deep breath. "He didn't get to leave with the hottest guy and girl this time, though."

"Of course not," Hiro cut in a little bitterly. "Just the hottest girl."

"Left the hottest guy behind, though," Peter said. He could feel himself blushing under the mask. Sometimes he hated it, but it could make him look more confident sometimes, too. "That's okay though," he began. "Since he left him behind,"

"I got to go with the hottest guy," Hiro said in unison with Peter.

Peter's jaw dropped. "Uh... Are you really that good at reading me?"

Hiro turned to look at him. "It was a pretty obvious line."

Peter let himself drop and walked over to Hiro. "Yeah. I guess." He sat next to him and bumped him gently with his shoulder. "I mean it, though. You can have anyone you want." Peter's toes tapped against the glass of the observation windows. "Including me."

+----+

Daily Bugle, May 17, 2014

AN OPEN LETTER TO NEW YORK ABOUT THE FANTASTIC FIVE'S RETURN  
By Peter Parker

The end of the International Symposium on Superscience was interrupted ten days ago by the accidental generation of an interdimensional portal, which I found myself on the wrong side of in the company of the Fantastic Five, Bruce Banner, and Iron Man. While our experiences on Counter-Earth have been detailed in interviews on the pages of this and other papers, the most heartening part of the whole experience was our return to New York.  
I had sprained my ankle running away from the Counter-Earth version of Captain America, a very frightening man calling himself "General Discord," and couldn't be present for the festivities, but I consider the Fantastic Five close personal friends, and it was good to see their return celebrated with an impromptu parade. That's what's so great about this city. Keep being awesome, New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, Johnny, you keep telling yourself that that question won't come up again.
> 
> I started this based on the question and answer in the summary, and while I've always known they would come up at some point, I'm halfway discovering this story with you all. The Tokyo bit is a fun little addition. I wonder how many ways I can come up with for johnny to answer that question...


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second of two chapters added today. If you've been following this story, make sure to check back to make sure you haven't missed anything.

What really got to Johnny about Mary Jane was the way she talked so casually about his bizarre life. She tended to listen quietly and patiently while he bared his soul about whatever strange shit was going wrong in his life. Or going right, like the way she watched him waxing eloquent about his evenings in Tokyo with Hiro's hot teammate and that guy with the awesome hair who Johnny was pretty sure did some kind of esoteric science-heroing in Poland.

"It was just... I mean, we all wound up speaking French at each other, and kinda badly, but it was just so good!" Johnny flopped back on the couch. "And, MJ, I don't think you know how important this can be, but they both had amazingly good backs. I mean, a lot of superheroes get their backs all fucked up. You should see Peter's back. It's horrible. You know that time a few months ago when he came in to school limping? Ben punched him through a concrete column in a practice fight, and Reed's been trying to get it to set up right for ages."

MJ rolled her eyes. "I thought you were gonna tell me how important feet are," she teased.

Johnny rolled his eyes. "The only superheroes with nice feet are the ones who are completely invulnerable. It's not an easy life on the whole... extremities area." Johnny waved vaguely at his own sock-clad feet. "I mean, even I'm starting to get a minor case of superfoot. I saw Tony Stark barefoot at a pool party once. Huge shrapnel wound across the left foot, some kinda horrible burn scars on the right. Naturally, Peter's are perfect."

Mary Jane sighed. "Johnny, you have to tell him how you feel. I mean it. He's not going to wait forever."

"Yes, he is, because I'm not telling him." Johnny crossed his arms irritably and glared pointedly at the ceiling. "We both had our relationships melt down because of one little makeout, and he feels horrible about it. I'm a mistake to him."

Mary Jane blinked. "Johnny, he loves you. I don't think he's been shy about that."

Johnny rolled his eyes. "He thinks I'm hot. That's not love, MJ. It's just attraction."

+----+

Johnny had never been one for brooding. Brooding was more Peter's shtick. He was good at it, too. Johnny always managed to stuff it up somehow, like that time he'd been trying to have a perfectly good brood over Ben apparently dying in an alien attack and Sofia had thought he looked so sexy when he was all dark and brooding that she'd dragged him off to the X-Mansion and done some pretty heavily extracurricular things with him.

Still, he thought, sitting at the base of the Freedom Tower's ridiculous spire, he could sometimes get a really good brood in if he was feeling particularly awful. He was making little curlicues and helices of flame dance over his outstretched hand, thinking back to the little parade that had greeted them when they returned to New York a month ago. Peter had seemed so happy. Even with his Spidey suit torn to shreds and his shiny new camera destroyed by a Norman Osborn who was somehow an even bigger asshole than the regular one _despite_ being a shining paragon of heroic goodness and superpowered daring-do, Peter had smiled and looked around at New York with that infectious joy he got when something rubbed him exactly the right way. He'd smiled at Johnny like he thought he was the one who hung the moon, and when they got themselves changed and cleaned up and fed with something besides the slightly horrifying Starkmeals™ that were apparently the only food available anywhere on Counter-Earth's North America, he'd looked so good. 

Peter had put on the fresh Spidey suit, and the new mask had come down over his face, and Johnny had wanted so badly to kiss him, but then Peter had said something about going off to call Hiro and let him know he was okay, and Johnny regretted it.

He'd known what he was doing. Hiro had been such an easy distraction. A push here, a nudge there, and Peter was hanging out with him, or tinkering in a back room with Hiro's gauntlets, or the Spidey suit's internal electronics, or showing Hiro how to mix up a basic web fluid from drain cleaner, whole wheat flour, bananas, and superglue. Johnny had no idea if Hiro was interested, but Peter definitely was, and had obviously told Hiro he was, and Hiro was still comfortable around him. Johnny had walked in on them watching anime without subtitles in Peter's hotel room at three in the morning once. Peter had laid down his head on Hiro's lap and was providing a slightly sloppy line-for-line translation of the dialogue, and Hiro's hands had been chastely resting resting one on the big, stupid-fluffy hotel bed and one on Peter's shoulder while he laughed at a mistranslation. Johnny had mumbled an apology and stolen one of Peter's little tiny shampoos and all of the condoms the hotel had provided.

He didn't know what the rules were for guy friends, but he was pretty sure the local etiquette insisted that what he'd seen was unthinkably intimate for people who were possibly romantically interested in each other.

A streak of flame in the western sky slowly resolved itself into Iron Man, heading straight for him. Tony maneuvered with his usual lazy imprecision, wobbling into a solid hover just in front of Johnny for a few seconds until he dropped to the roof and approached.

"Hey Sparky. A helicopter flying by reported flames up here. I thought it might be you, but I wanted to check it out. You're not still angry about the Starkmeals™, are you?" Tony retracted his faceplate so his voice wasn't filtered through the suit's speakers anymore and awkwardly levered himself down next to Johnny.

"Mister Stark, have you ever been in love?" Johnny asked.

"Oh." Tony looked up at the moon, mouthed something Johnny didn't feel like trying to puzzle out, and continued, "I guess I can't just fly away, huh? It's gotta be advice time, right?"

Johnny glared at him.

"Okay, I can do this. Um... what's his name? Or is it a girl? I forget, what are you into?"

"I'm into people. Boys, girls, genderless aliens. I did a robot once." Johnny snuffed out the flames he was playing with. No sense spooking any more helicopter pilots.

"Careful with the artificial intelligences, kid, they can get a little controlling," Tony muttered. "I've been in love, yeah. You wanna... you know, answer the other question?"

Johnny shook his head no, but he answered anyway. "Spidey. He's... He's perfect, Mister Stark. He's brilliant, and he's funny, and he's cute, and he's been doing this for, like, two years and he still doesn't even have superfeet."

"Oh, man, he doesn't have superfeet?" Tony shook his head. "Okay, I kinda hate him a little. My feet are awful."

"Everyone's are. You forget to protect 'em."

Tony sighed. "I had... such a thing for Natasha. When she first joined the Avengers, she was like..." He held out both hands, tracing out an hourglass figure in the air. "And she had..." He tapped the side of his head, then his chest, both actions producing tiny clanging noises. "That was just a crush, though. How long have you felt like this about him?"

Johnny thought for a moment. "It's the eighteenth, right?"

Tony shook his head. "It's about thirty minutes past midnight."

Naturally. "Two years and a day."

Tony frowned. "You've been all about Peter since you met him? You dated other people while you were in love with Peter?"

Johnny sighed. "I didn't know what to do with him hitting on me at first. And then he started dating this guy, and I thought he must have been serious, but... I mean, he was, like, perma-flirting with everyone on Counter-Earth. You saw. He actually hit on the Hulk. He doesn't really mean it."

"I should have tried hitting on the Hulk myself," Tony said with a wistful sigh. "I've never seen Banner go from enormous green rage monster to passively baffled that quick in my life." He drummed the fingers of his left hand against his thigh, making a rhythmic clanking rattle. "Look, if I tell you something, can you keep it a secret?"

Johnny nodded. He stuck out his hand, pinky extended. "Pinky promise, dude. I will make you the most sacred vow I know."

Tony laughed and linked pinkies with Johnny. "That works, kid. Okay. So, when Steve got shot on the mission to Prague about ten years ago, I about died. There I was, smartest man in the world because Hank Pym doesn't count and Reed Richards was still in high school and also isn't smarter than me, and I couldn't do a damn thing. I was watching him slowly bleed to death on a table in some dirty backroom, and I realized I'd spent the last five years slowly falling in love with him." Tony sighed. "I don't do men. The gayest thing I've ever done was one time I tag-teamed a girl with my college roommate, and we were both really awkward afterwards. But I was looking at Steve dying, and I thought 'that's it. I'm never gonna love anyone the way I love this man.'"

"What happened?" Johnny asked.

Tony snorted. "I'm a superhero, kid. I moved heaven and earth. Archimedes said 'give me a long enough lever and a place to rest it, and I will move the Earth,' and let me tell you, I had a long damn lever. I got the right people in the right places to bring that man back from the brink of death, and then I didn't look him in the face for almost a year." Tony slumped a little. "He finally had to talk to me. Pulled me aside, said 'Tony, I know you have feelings for me,' and I... I think I probably turned purple, I blushed so hard. He told me he wasn't interested. Said he'd never felt that way about another guy, and he knew he'd go through the same kind of hell to save me I'd gone through for him. Said he appreciated it, and he was flattered, and he didn't want to break my heart but there was nothing for it.

"I went on kind of a binge after that. I've always had a bit of a thing with alcohol, and that was the last straw. I woke up in Russia one day, facedown in a puddle of what I keep telling myself was just vodka. Not pretty. People got jumpy for years anytime I had a drink that wasn't really obviously just coffee. But hell, kid, I was thirty. I was thirty, and most of the time when Steve and I were together, I was behind the armor. He still saw. You're young and stupid and you wear your heart on your sleeve like some kind of dipshit." Tony stood up. "Trust me, Pete knows." He offered his hand to Johnny. Johnny took it and stood. "Try to distract yourself. If he hasn't made a move, he doesn't want to. Move on, kid. Don't waste your time pining."

"What do I do when I see him with somebody else?"

"Same thing I did when Steve got together with Sharon." Tony dropped the faceplate back down. "Get really depressed, then go bang some chick without enough common sense to reject you." He flew away, and Johnny stared after him. He kinda wanted to scream a little.

+----+

It took another three weeks for The Question to get thrown in Johnny's face again. It was asked by People Magazine when they were doing an exclusive about his new relationship with Doreen. In between mildly offensive questions like "does the tail bother you?" and "have you ever thought she was just... kinda ridiculous?" the interviewer slipped in "what's the pettiest thing you've ever done to someone you love?"

The article described Johnny's reaction as "stricken, perhaps a little ill, and completely at odds with his reply."

"I once glitterbombed Sue right before a mission. When she tried to turn invisible, she left a trail of glitter all over everywhere. She had to sit it out and we had to recruit a ghost to help us with stealth. It was a total disaster."

+----+

Daily Bugle, July 25, 2014

NORMAN OSBORN CONVICTED OF SUPERCRIME, SENTENCE STILL IN QUESTION

In a surprising turn after last week's dramatic capture of the Green Goblin by the Fantastic Five, Judge Nathaniel Hawker delayed his sentencing of Norman Osborn, the clear culprit of the Green Goblin crimes.  
"The case needs more study," Hawker told Eddie Brock when asked about the decision. "It's clear that Osborn committed the crimes he's accused of, but what's unclear is his state of mind at the time."  
Osborn's state of mind and mental fitness to stand trial were both brought into question by his defense attorney during the trial, who pointed out that the "goblin serum" Osborn had been using to become the Green Goblin was a highly psychoactive compound. The defense's efforts to portray Osborn as addicted to a dangerous and little-understood drug were insufficient to prevent his conviction, but if defense attorney Donald Menken has his way, Norman Osborn may still find himself free from prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, no, I don't ship Tony Stark/Steve Rogers.  
> I just think they really need to bone once in a while because they do not have the healthiest of relationships with each other and a little catharsis would do them good.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one feels a bit longer than my usual chapters.

"Okay, I'm on top of the Chrysler Building. It's cold and it's dark and I have no clue why I'm here." Peter readjusted his hand's positioning against the cool metal of the spire atop his favorite skyscraper. His other hand juggled the phone a little and he looked around, slightly puzzled.

"It should show up in a minute," Hiro said. "Look up and to the West. About thirty degrees off the horizon, just a little South of due West." 

Peter rolled his eyes, but turned his head in the direction Hiro had indicated. "You know this is crazy, right?"

Hiro chuckled. "Yes. I do. But it took a month to get permission to do this, and then another month to get it set up. I'm sorry it couldn't be sooner."

Peter spotted it close to where he'd been looking, just a little to the right. An airplane, a twin-engine private jet. "I'll let you enjoy the show," Hiro said. He hung up, and a few moments later, the airplane changed, a light appeared on its side and flickered slightly. A speck dropped from the jet, and then ignited, and for a moment, Peter thought of Sidewinder missiles and assassination attempts. It was rocketing towards him, describing a slow, loose spiral that brought it around behind him, then turned it back towards him. The light of its jets went out as the plane that had dropped it passed over the shoreline.

Peter heard a whooping noise, and his eyes went wide. The speck resolved in the air as it plummeted, and Peter could see arms and legs, a twirling figure letting out the same exultant cry of exuberant joy that he'd found so intoxicating in Tokyo.

Hiro jetted to a stop about fifty feet away from him and then shifted his weight so that his battlesuit brought him up next to Peter.

"Hi, Spider-Man," Hiro said breathlessly. "I thought I should come for a visit."

Peter smiled crookedly. He really had to look into getting a mask that could show facial expressions better. "I thought you were just sending a lightshow or a new invention or something."

Hiro was beaming like a toothpaste ad. "No. Baymax is coming in at the airport tomorrow with Sunfire. Officially, we're here for Mister Richards' cooperation initiative."

"Really?" Peter asked.

"Really, I'm here for you." Hiro extended a hand and magnetic-grappled easily to the spire, his hand stuck to it an inch or so from Peter's. He rested one foot against the spire and reached out to touch Peter. Peter held up a hand. 

"Hiro, are you telling me you want... want me?"

Hiro nodded.

"Then you have to decide if you want to be with Spider-Man or Peter Parker."

Hiro froze for a moment. Finally, he spoke, a lot slower than his usual pace. "I want the newspapers at home to be outraged. I want to walk around in public holding hands." He took a deep breath. "Peter Parker."

Peter nodded. "Then it looks like Spider-Man is telling you how to get to Peter Parker's house. Of course, Parker is hanging out with Johnny and his new girlfriend at the Baxter Building right now. I'll run there, change, and take the bus home. You get to spring a romantic surprise." Peter rattled off his address. "I promise I'll be surprised when I see you."

Hiro's smile, which had faltered a little as Peter told him where to go, returned in full force. "I can't wait," he said, and he flew away, jetpack blazing bright, finned helmet catching the light from the buildings.

Peter jumped straight out from the spire and made his way to the Baxter Building. He thumped into Johnny's window and knocked, looking carefully away from the glass. After a moment, it swung open. Doreen grinned at Peter. "So polite," she said. "Looking away in case I wasn't decent."

"You're never decent," Peter shot back, crawling inside. He dropped to the floor. Johnny was passed out on the bed already, big fluffy blanket wrapped around him. Doreen was wearing a nightie with a cat print all over it and a pair of particularly unsexy panties. Peter pointed as he headed over to the dresser where he'd left his civvies stacked neatly under Johnny's framed picture of Peter getting punched through a wall by Doctor Connors. "I'm guessing the tail doesn't cooperate with sexy underthings?"

Doreen chuckled. "Not as such, no. It's basically impossible to hide under baggy pants, too."

Peter started pulling off his mask and gloves. "You know there's not a soul in the world who buys the 'conspicuously awesome butt' line, right?"

Doreen shrugged. "It doesn't matter if they buy the line, it just matters that they don't know what it actually is. Where are you going in such a hurry? When you came in, I half expected you to try to get me and Johnny into a three-way."

Peter shook his head. "You really need to stop having such vivid sexual fantasies about me." He stuffed the gloves and mask into his backpack, next to his new (crappy) camera and a small plastic bag full of snacks. "After all, I'm taken." He started putting on his shirt, sighed, and took off the shoes of the Spidey suit. "Always forget the fucking shoes," he muttered.

"You're taken? That's news."

"It's new." Peter dragged his jeans on, pulled on his shirt, and grabbed his socks. "Turns out that thing Hiro wanted me to see was him coming to... like... declare his love for me. I asked if he wanted to be dating Spidey or Peter. He picked Peter, so I'm off to go be genuinely surprised when he turns up at my house."

Doreen solemnly offered a fistbump. "Secret identity bros," she said. 

Peter got his shoes on and smiled fondly at Johnny, who was snoring away in his blanket cocoon. "Let him know I'll tell him all about it tomorrow, okay?"

Doreen saluted. "Aye aye, Mister Spider-Dude, sir."

Peter hurried out, gave Sue a quick hug when he encountered her in the hall, and rushed down to the street. He caught the bus, still fiddling with his sleeves a little, and made his three transfers while wishing he could justify driving to the Baxter Building. The whole time he sat on the bus, his knees bounced, so out of his control that he wondered if he was about to break the bus with his strength. When he arrived at his house, Uncle Ben was sitting out on the front porch, having his monthly cigar with George from down the road. He waved at Peter. "You've got a visitor, Pete."

"Thanks," Peter said. "Spider-Man told me."

"Your kid is a little weird," George muttered to Uncle Ben as Peter hurried inside. The closing door cut off the rest of the conversation, largely because Peter wasn't bothering to try to listen.

Hiro was sitting on the couch in one of Peter's old t-shirts and the tight jeans he wore under the battlesuit. The battlesuit itself was in the corner in storage mode, having folded itself neatly into the helmet. Aunt May was frozen in mid-motion, a glass of milk half held out to Hiro, who was apparently working on the dessert portion of being fed by Aunt May. Sitting beside Hiro on the couch was a bouquet of roses.

The three of them stayed like that for a moment, and then Hiro set down his plate of cookies and snatched up the roses. He padded barefoot over to Peter and held up the flowers. "I got nervous and bought you roses."

Peter grabbed the roses, held them out to the side, and pulled Hiro in to kiss him fiercely. After a few moments, he pulled away. "Tell me what changed your mind?" Peter asked quietly as Aunt May retreated tactfully into the den.

Hiro sagged against him. "It was the portal. I thought I was never going to see you again. I... I love Honey Lemon, but she doesn't make me laugh like you, and she doesn't let herself love me like you, and she's not a ridiculous supergenius like you, and... When you were gone, I cried. A lot. Baymax was... very worried. You came back, and I drove my mom crazy running around the house and cheering. It's not much good being a prodigy if you're not smart enough to know how you feel. And I realized that I'd been avoiding it. Peter, I'm in love with you."

Peter kissed him again. "Good. Because I'm, like, an irresponsible level of in love with you, too." He grabbed his hand and dragged him up the stairs.

+----+

Northstar was possibly the most boring speaker Peter had ever seen. Black Bolt was at least entertainingly pompous, and T'challa had a habit of scrutinizing everything around him like it was personally offensive to him. Vision was stoic and creepy as ever, sitting next to Baymax, who was watching everyone in a regular pattern, his glowing eyes flashing from hero to hero as he scanned the room.

Northstar finally stopped talking, and Reed spoke up. "Northstar has a point. If we all divert to whatever trouble spot shows up, it'll get very easy to predict and control our movements. But it's also very easy for people like Doom to predict what they'll be facing based on where they attack."

"It does get a little old to have every third fight involve some kind of magical damper," Captain Britain agreed.

"I feel your pain, friend," Thor boomed. "It is tiresome to rescue Jane Foster every month from simple variations upon the same cackling madmen as always."

"I'll be sure to tell her how you feel next time we have a chat," Tony Stark said.

"It's just fine to talk about fighting together." Starlord had his feet up on the table, his helmet retracted to show an annoyingly attractive face. He kept shooting deeply unsubtle looks across the table at Kitty Pryde. "Some of us live in space and shit, though. I mean, I know I'm kinda the major one for the whole space thing, but come on, Reed. I had to peel your stretchy ass off a Nova Corps starship last week. There was a spatula."

"Point of order," Peter interrupted. "Pics or it didn't happen."

"Spider-Man," Reed began, but had to abandon the scolding in favor of a hurt look when Sue started giggling next to him.

"The point is," Starlord said, "people like the Fantastic However-The-Karffle-Many-There-Are pretty regularly leave the planet. And they need to. I spend half my time tracking down things that are rumored to be maybe a threat to Earth. Reed over there has to redirect frikkin' Galactus about once a year."

"The interests of our various homes might be hurt by this arrangement of yours, Reed," Black Bolt growled. "What will you do to protect the Inhumans?"

"The same as you would do to protect New York," Reed shot back. "That's the point. If New York needs Black Panther, or Wakanda needs Alpha Flight, isn't it better if we're all able to help each other?"

"I'm in favor of it," Hiro said. Peter looked across the conference table at him and smiled. "Tokyo needs more than just Big Hero 6 to defend it. And we stopped New York from getting turned into a crater earlier this year."

"Where does it end?" T'Challa asked. "If we agree to this, do we become an army? Do you want to attack Latveria, Richards?"

"We could," Stark and Thor pointed out at once. Arguments and shouting started up again. Hiro shrugged across the table with a little sigh. Peter got the feeling these negotiations were going to take a long time.

+----+

"Well, that's particularly rude."

Peter looked up. Hiro wasn't actually _living_ at his house, but he was there more often than he was at the hotel he'd booked with Baymax for the duration of the talks about the international initiative T'challa was still irritably calling the Global Avengers. The conferences and arguments had already dragged on for a couple of months, and while Peter appreciated having gotten to take a superhero-cum-foreign-dignitary to the homecoming dance (the look on Blake's face when he did his traditional waltz by to make Peter jealous had been priceless), he couldn't help being irritated that Hiro's own schedule was being messed up so badly.

Not that Hiro had too strict of a schedule at home. He had turned eighteen a few days before, laughingly pointing out at the party that he was now technically not allowed to have sex with Peter. He didn't even have school. He'd graduated high school at fifteen, breezed through a master's degree in two years like some kind of maniac, and was waiting around to find the perfect doctorate program.

Of course, he was also glaring halfheartedly at a Japanese gossip magazine, but Hiro was a complicated person. He contained multitudes.

"New nickname?" Peter asked.

"It transliterates to 'Six Enormous Sluts,' which is just unfair." Hiro tossed the magazine down onto the bed. Peter picked it up and started reading it while Hiro went back to tinkering with his newest mildly terrifying robotics project. "I mean, they're calling the whole team sluts, and none of us are. Baymax isn't even equipped for that."

"And thank god for that," Peter said. He set the magazine aside. "You have enough weird daddy issues about him without having to deal with being the guy who sculpted his junk. You know they're just being dicks because you haven't promised to bring your amazing boyfriend to Japan and marry him properly."

Hiro sighed. The servo he was building made an ominous crinkling noise, and he froze, peering closely at it. "I know the solution to that. But I'm not taking that solution just to make them happy."

Peter sat up. "Then don't. Don't do things to make them happy, I mean. Do things to make you happy. Make us happy."

+----+

Daily Bugle, October 8, 2014

FANTASTIC FIVE, AVENGERS CREATE INTERNATIONAL SUPERTEAM

While the global superhero cooperation initiative has ultimately collapsed, The Fantastic Five and the Avengers have agreed to sign onto it anyways. They are joined by Canadian team Alpha Flight, as well as Captain Britain, the Guardians of the Galaxy, The Great Lakes Avengers, and Japan's Big Hero 6. The limited version of the program allows unrestricted travel for selected heroes between participating countries, and guarantees support from other superteams where possible.  
In the wake of the decision, several changes have come up in the lineups of major teams. Notably, the members of Big Hero 6 have dispersed throughout the other teams to pick up skills and make contacts. Their places have been filled in Japan by a group being called the Pacific Avengers by critics.  
The interim Japanese team, which consists of Sunfire, Iron Heart, Cyclops, Squirrel Girl, Anole, and Black Widow, is already hard at work, having foiled a major attack by AIM on their first day together in Tokyo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to go update my tags again!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Johnny really needs to get his act together, doesn't he?

"You hate him," Doreen said. Johnny frowned across the webcam. Her going to Japan immediately after the breakup had probably been for the best. After all, he could talk to her now, instead of him having offended her too badly for her to talk to him again. It didn't mean she wasn't still annoyingly perceptive.

"Of course I do," Johnny growled. "Have you looked at him? It's like Peter custom-ordered him from a catalog."

"Johnny, you don't custom order things from catalogs," Doreen said. She frowned down at the cashews she was smashing and tossed one off to the side, where a chittering noise and a flash of brown fur signaled its horrible demise. She sighed. "But I get your point. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the way you feel about Hiro is how I feel about Peter?" She shrugged. "You go for strong, smart, funny, and cute. I'm most of those things, but Peter is all of them, and the ones that I am, he's better at them. I've never been his kind of smart in the first place. I mean, I'm not any kind of stupid, but he's, like, some kind of freaky supergenius. I can turn a phrase, and he's like a stand up comedy god in brightly-colored spandex. I'm adorable, but I know for a fact I've got squirrel teeth, whereas Peter is basically the picture in the dictionary next to the word 'adorbz.' I can do a couple of tons, but Peter can throw a boxcar down the street."

"Oh, are we talking about Peter Stupid Parker?" Vic's voice came from somewhere else in the room Doreen was Skyping from. He showed up behind her and opened up the fridge. "Isn't it hilarious that Storm lost him to the only guy more Peter Parker than Peter Parker himself?"

Doreen shot a glare over her shoulder at Vic, then turned a sympathetic look on Johnny. "He's kinda right," she said. "I mean, Peter's what, like the twentieth smartest dude in the world and the..." Doreen tapped her fingers against the counter and listed off "Tony, Hank, Hank-but-fuzzy, Hiro, Reed, Bruce, T'Challa, Riri... Yeah, he's _maybe_ the ninth smartest hero in the world. I'd actually probably say he's more like fifth or sixth. I mean, Hank-but-fuzzy gets a lot of recognition for being, like, the smartest mutant, and I think Tony and Riri mostly just feed off each other. And Peter's dating, like, straight up the most promising prodigy in the history of ever. Peter's where Reed was at his age. Hiro's where Reed is _now."_

"Tell him he's screwed and he should go be miserable," Vic bit out.

"The bitter ex look is ugly on you, Vic," Johnny snapped. 

Doreen smiled. Johnny was beginning to really hate that smile. "He's kinda right, though," she said. "You're a little screwed."

+----+

Eli Bradley wasn't much help either. Johnny thought he should probably have known better than to count on any of the Young Avengers weirdoes for advice.

"You've been brooding about this for, like three months," Eli grunted when Johnny complained to him about Sue inviting Hiro to the Baxter Building for Thanksgiving.

"I'm just saying." Johnny laid back on the park bench he'd picked out as a good hangout spot after the fight with Green Goblin. Marvel Boy was off playing the Incredible Sulk the way he always did when somebody got away. It didn't actually make any sense for him to be pissed; the Goblin had been using some kind of ultrascience whatsit tol give a workout to the concept of overkill for most of the fight.

"Dude, he fucking stopped a building from falling on you." Eli glared at Johnny and his hands squeezed the metal of the bench's frame. "I get that you and Parker had some kind of Peeta and Katniss thing going on, but you need to fucking suck it up and stop annoying everyone with this shit."

Johnny winced. "Jesus, does everyone think I'm just a whiny dickhead?"

"I do," Hulkling said from where he was lifting a bus off of a particularly pointy fountain. Wiccan was helping, a look of moderate to severe sappiness on his face.

Marvel Boy snorted with laughter. It killed his sulk, but that was okay, because at least it was funny. "Come on, man. I get enough super-gay super-drama on my own team. Go to Thanksgiving. Have a nice time. Stop bothering us about it. Please?"

+----+

"Well?"

Johnny stared at the ceiling. Peter was hanging upside down. He claimed it made him better at Mario Kart. He was also giving Johnny a look that said he was pretty completely not fooled.

"I have no idea what you want," Johnny lied.

Peter picked a dorito out of the bowl and threw it at Johnny. Their traditional Thanksgiving day video game binge had started a little late, owing to some looney in a turkey costume making an unusually valiant effort to take revenge for his feathery brethren. Usually these guys showed up, did their stupid stuff, and left, but this one had decided that ray guns capable of turning people into poultry were a great idea, and although Johnny would forever treasure the sight of a furious, orange-feathered Ben Grimm pecking the shit out of a poor unfortunate whacko, everyone but he and Peter was thoroughly crashed out. Hiro was snoring loudly on the couch in the living room, instead of the high-rise apartment Peter was slowly moving into.

"Johnny, just tell me how he did," Peter said. "I need to know if you can be around him at family things like this, or if you're actually so opposed to him that you're going to light him on fire and stuff him face first into She's turkey one of these days."

Johnny sighed. "I can get used to him. He makes you happy." Johnny tried not to scowl too much. Just because Hiro made Peter happy didn't mean it wasn't completely unfair that Johnny couldn't.

"Good," Peter said. "After all, you're not getting rid of me. And it matters. That you can do it, I mean. That's important to me."

Johnny rolled his eyes and started the next race. "Yeah, you can keep him." He grinned fondly over at Peter.

"Good," Peter said. He trounced Johnny like usual on Rainbow Road, and after the scoreboard announced his victory, he said, casually, "so I'm gonna propose to him on New Year's."

Johnny gave serious thought to smothering himself to death, but ultimately decided that cool ranch was a far too undignified mode of death.

+----+

Daily Bugle, December 8, 2014

GOBLIN DEFACES CHRISTMAS TREE

New York residents awoke this morning to a strange sight. The Rockeffeller Center Christmas Tree, an icon of the holidays, was vandalized last night in a petty display by Norman Osborn, the infamous Green Goblin. The tree, which had been decorated in purple and green as an homage to the Hill's world-saving exploits early last month, had been covered in pumpkin-themed baubles and was ticking ominously, obviously set to explode. While the Fantastic Five did fail to apprehend Osborn, Hiro Takachiho, formerly of Japan's Big Hero 6, prevented the tree from detonating and provided new, holographic decorations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway through this, computer troubles forced me to switch to writing on my smartphone. Errors past the first scene can be blamed on that.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing on my phone again :(

Peter found it in Hiro's sock drawer a week and a half after they moved in together. It was wrapped up in an old athletic sock, a brand that wasn't sold in the United States. All he'd really wanted was a decent pair of dress socks for his graduation, and there he was, staring at an engagement ring that Hiro had never offered him.

"You should have seen it, MJ," Peter insisted. "It was the fucking Taj Mahal in ring form."

"Made of marble and weirdly juxtaposed with signs of pervasive poverty?" MJ asked.

Peter rolled his eyes at her. "Shockingly gorgeous and really expensive." He stared at the cafeteria table. Their last day in the high school without anybody wearing a ridiculous robe. Unless Flash Thompson had followed through on his threat to start a toga party in the gym. "MJ, he's running around with my crappy little white gold ring on his finger, and he spent the GDP of Lichtenstein on a ring that he never even told me about."

MJ sighed. "Look, Tiger, there's a factor here you're missing. His ring is prettier, pricier, and probably has diamonds or some shit like that. Yours is the one you proposed with."

Peter frowned. "I just don't get why he never told me."

"Try asking." MJ poked at Peter's forehead. "You found it by accident. Just tell him you're curious. I know you're capable of self-destructing even your best relationships, but I have watched you screw up your love life so many times, I swear, Spider-Dork, if you fuck this up, I will end you. I have told the magical story of how you got him all alone on New Years too many times to start ending it with the bit where you freak out over direct evidence that he meant it when he said yes and kill an engagement that's been making all of New York lose its collective shit over your cuteness for five months."

Peter frowned. "That wouldn't be cute."

MJ just shook her head.

+----+

"So now he's using the new set for the wedding bands," Johnny guessed, trailing little fireballs around his hands. Peter nodded, hurrying after him. Johnny was kind of dashing everywhere today. It made sense. The first days of summer were pretty much always be like this, half frantic and a little snippy. They rushed into their press conference, and Johnny laid a hand on Peter's shoulder. Reed was smiling at the gathering journalists, watching from the podium while they got cameras and microphones ready.

Most of the reporters were stealing the occasional glance at Peter, probably expecting him to unmask. It would make his life simpler, but he just couldn't put Uncle Ben and Aunt May at risk like that. He was already going to marry a superhero, but he figured that would make him a target, not his aunt and uncle. 

Reed looked left, to Sue, and right, to Ben, Johnny, and Peter. He cleared his throat. "Today, I'm pleased to announce that Spider-Man will be joining the Fantastic Four as a full time member, making us officially the Fantastic Five."

"They're mostly doing this so that it'll be harder for me to skywrite the logo," Johnny interrupted, and then it was all chaos and questions. 

A few of them directed their questions at Peter, including one persistent rumor-chaser from a superhero magazine who asked if there were plans for Hiro to join up and make it six.

"I think Johnny would go nuts if we changed the logo just as he figures out how to skywrite it again," Peter said to that one. "I mean, I know he spends a lot of time with us, but that's because Johnny and Reed are both trying to steal him from Peter Parker. Johnny has a crushand Reed actually told him they could make beautiful science together last week."

"Parker was included in that," Reed clarified. "The two of them together had just re-balanced my wormhole equations to get the Hulk back from Counter-Earth's version of me."

"Kinky stuff," Johnny exclaimed.

Of course, they worked around to The Question again by the end of it. Peter had been counting. Thirty repetitions of the damn thing, and Johnny always gave a different answer. After the first few, he always made them about people he'd dated, and the look of abject despair was always there. This time, it was a fairly intense look that brushed over Peter for a devestating instant.

"What's the pettiest thing you've ever done to someone you loved?"

"I told Vic his tail was extremely unsexy after he grew it."

Vic had only grown the tail after a particularly bad fight a few months earlier. After the fight, Peter had sparred with him and nearly lost because he expected Vic to not be able to bench press a train car. 

"The tail is a recent development. Are you and he dating again?" The same reporter asked. Johnny smiled at the camera. 

"Well, I don't know yet." He made a telephone gesture. "Call me, Vic."

+----+

"That was just disturbing," Peter mumbled as he flopped down on the couch. Hiro was fixing something broken in his helmet, and he grinned at Peter, expertly lifting the delicate equipment out of the way. Peter lay his head in Hiro's lap. 

"I think it's sweet," Hiro said. "True love." He pulled a grain of sand out of the circuitry with tweezers. "Or at least Johnny's best attempt at it."

Peter shook his head. "I saw your freaky hentai collection when we moved in here. Those two making out is a disturbing sight, and you don't get a vote."

Hiro grumbled. "I really hope Doreen filled Fred's entire suitcase with squirrel crap for sending those along."

Peter smiled fondly up at Hiro and puckered his lips for a kiss, which Hiro happily delivered. "I still can't tell if that was your real porn collection or a really good practical joke."

"Why would Fred have had my porn collection?"

Peter grinned. "He's a weirdly attractive, kinda stonery-cute older guy with a nifty superpower and you looked up to him a lot while you were one of the Big Hero 6. I just kinda figured you'd fooled around with him in the past."

"He's not 'older,' Peter. He turned twenty-five last month. And no. The only other man I've ever been with was when I snuck into a gay bar with a fake ID when I came to New York the first time. His name was Vincent, and he had a weird-looking penis."

Peter smirked. "I'm learning needlepoint so I can put that on our wall all pretty in a frame and shock Aunt May."

+----+

Daily Bugle, June 28, 2015

SUPERHERO COMMUNITY STARTS PLANNING GAY WEDDINGS

Dates have been set for the weddings of no less than thirty same-sex superhero couples since Friday's landmark Supreme Court decision. Among unsurprising announcements like Hiro Takachiho and Peter Parker are unexpected couples like Iceman and Deadpool.  
For a listing of the wedding dates of superheroes, check dailybugle.com/supermatrimony, or watch for attacks by Doctor Doom against pleasant suburban event venues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MJ was very rude to that one particularly long sentence. I had to stop and read it back to myself to make sure it all hung together right.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listened to Star Trek soundtracks while writing this one. It was fun writing. There's a little bit of bonus Deadpool for you all towards the end of the first scene.

"Okay, this? This is fucking ridiculous." Johnny piled his little stack of cheeses back on top of his cracker and glared down the length of the table. Peter and Hiro were giggling happily over the only-mildly-sarcastic gift Johnny had given them, and really, he was happy for them. Mostly for Peter.

Beside him, Reed smiled a little more broadly than was entirely within the bounds of human ability and elbowed him gently. "You're supposed to be smiling, Johnny."

Johnny shot a murderous look at his hors d'oeuvre and replied angrily "I have just watched the love of my life marry someone who's way better for him than I ever will be, and my fucking tiny cracker keeps dropping terrible rich-people cheese all over my lap." He wreathed the cracker in flames for a moment to melt the cheese enough for it to stick to it. "I am going to be grumpy, and then I am going to go and find whoever it is I'm going to wake up next to tomorrow, and whoever that is, I am going to go and get very drunk with them, which I can't do here because I am nineteen and America has stupid laws."

Reed sighed "You are going to cause a scandal."

Johnny shrugged. "Peter knew what he was getting into when he asked me to be his best man. He even told me to delay the scandal until after the reception." 

A marshmallow hit the side of Johnny's head, and he froze. Peter was staring at him, holding one of the twin marshmallow shooters Johnny had gotten them to run around the apartment beaning each other with treats with. Peter's face was a picture of pretended innocence, and when Johnny gave him a dirty look, he pointed to Hiro, who laughed a little more openly than he had been before. Johnny shook his head and turned back to his plate, but by this point in the evening, nobody was actually focused on food. Except for Wolverine, who was chowing down happily on a salad. It was perhaps the most surreal thing Johnny had ever seen. 

A hand landed on Johnny's shoulder after a few minutes, and he looked up to see Peter easing himself into the chair next to him. "What's wrong, Johnny? You know you can't hide despair-face from me."

Johnny snorted. "Your stupid law-abiding open bar won't get me drunk and you didn't invite enough hot people to this." _I'm losing you forever and you're smiling like you've won the lottery._

Peter sighed. "Right. Okay, yeah. Johnny, I know Hiro isn't your favorite dude. For the life of me, I don't know why. I mean, if I had a conjoined twin, you'd be more my bro than his, and Hiro is like if I was trying to write myself as a character in a comic book." Peter frowned. "Okay, maybe I see why you have trouble with him, but Johnny, you two get along okay most of the time."

Johnny tried to intimidate his _vols-au-vent_ with a glare. They remained uncowed. "I dunno, Webhead. I guess it just... it bothers me. You're..." _not available_ "You're a _husband_ now. I mean, you're gonna start wearing button-up shirts and talking about taxes."

"I already do that," Peter pointed out. "I can only get so much money out of photographing superheroes. I worry about taxes."

Johnny grinned. "Yeah, you are a giant dork."

Peter sketched out a rough rectangle in the air. "Squaresville."

"You've been hanging out with Uncle Ben."

Peter grinned. "A little. Go talk to him. Tell him I said you can have some booze. Aunt May thinks he didn't successfully smuggle in the flask, but that's because he gave it to me and I stuck it to my back."

"Oh my god, marry me," Johnny said.

Peter smirked. "Go hit up my uncle for that one. He's the Boozebringer. The Gatekeeper of Getting Turnt. The Rajah of Rum. The-"

"I'll go, Jesus, just stop," Johnny held his hands up in surrender and hurried off. He found Ben Parker looking a little doe-eyed at his wife while she took a turn around the dance floor with Sunfire. Johnny sat down and held out a glass of orange juice. Ben quirked an eyebrow and withdrew a flask to spike it. He took a sip, shook his head, added a little more rum, and hid the flask again.

"I should've had Peter bring two. That boy breaks a lot of hearts."

Johnny pounded back a little bit of his improvised Malibu sunset. It was actually pretty good. Johnny suspected Uncle Ben was good at drinking at weddings. "He didn't break my heart." Uncle Ben gave Johnny A Look. Johnny turned red. "He didn't... he could've, like, taken it out and stepped on it. Held it up all beating in front of me like 'Kalima' with the lub-dub-lub-dub and tossing me in a pit of fire."

Uncle Ben smirked. "Flame on."

"I am never going to live down that stupid catchphrase phase." Johnny slammed back more of his drink.

"Hey, what's the pettiest thing you've ever done to someone you loved?" Johnny jumped about a foot in the air and turned to see the girl who had just asked The Question of Nightmares behind him. Probably the worst decision he ever made was to start hitting on people with his answers. It had worked out okay with Vic for a while except that they got into a fight about whether or not "frolf" was a sport and had a huge public breakup. It had been a pretty good way to get into Crystal's pants, but she'd kept asking why he always looked do fucked up for a second when the question came up and dumped him for keeping secrets. He didn't want to think about what had happened when he tried to get back with MJ with it.

And now he was staring at Gwen Stacy while Logan went and got another salad behind her. Johnny's jaw may have scraped the floor a little. She was wearing a tight red evening gown with a daring proportion of organza. It couldn't be comfortable, but she was practically basking in the discomfort. The overall effect was so drop-dead sexy Johnny had to make an effort to close his mouth before Uncle Ben made one of those "catching flies" comments old people loved so much. He babbled the first thing that came to mind when he was finished looking up and down the length of her. "There was this girl, and I let her keep dating Peter when the right thing to do would have been to steal her." Gwen stared at him in abject horror for a minute and then started _cackling,_ which slightly hurt Johnny's ego until he noticed that she was definitely kinda drunk. He reached out to grab her hand and pulled her gently into the seat next to him. "Sit down, Gwen. You're drunk. And I'm not drunk enough."

"I'm sorry," she said, "but getting that awful line from the guy that he broke up with me over..."

Johnny flagged down a caterer and got a glass of water for Gwen. He chatted with Uncle Ben until the rum was gone. It kept going to people Johnny would never have expected to need a stiff drink at Peter's wedding. MJ came by for a glass and rubbed the sleeping Gwen's back for a while, then told Johnny to take care of her and wandered off to go hit on one of the X-Men.

Eventually, the party wound down enough that people started to leave. Logan had looked very sad when the salad bar ran dry, and only leaving with an exasperated Jean Grey had seemed to calm him down. A voice behind Johnny crowed "OOOH, a meeting of the Superfriends!"

"Oh god," Johnny muttered. Gwen jerked upright and recoiled slightly when Deadpool scooted into the chair next to her. He wasn't wearing the mask.

"Hi, Wonder Woman. I'm gonna love your movie in a couple years. Hey, are you guys moping, or is that just Johnny?" Deadpool stuck out a hand, which Gwen shook, looking bewildered.

"They're moping," Uncle Ben said. "How are you today, Wade?"

Deadpool grinned ghoulishly. "Happily married to a frigid ice king. The sex is great."

Uncle Ben snorted. "That's good. Hey, thanks for the help last year with the sewer gator thing. I'm gonna go make sure my wife doesn't have to talk to you." He got up and hurried away.

"That man is a national treasure," Deadpool said. He leaned back in his chair and smiled at Gwen. "So is that dress. Storm, Torchy, Johnny-baby, please tap that so we can all say someone got into that dress besides her. I'd do it, but I'm a size three, and red isn't my color."

Johnny blinked. It was like being assaulted by a stand-up comedy routine. "Deadpool," he began.

"Please, just call me Dead. Deadpool was my father. Which might actually be true. I did some time traveling the other day, and you never know who you'll end up impregnating." Deadpool produced a novelty silly straw designed to look like Hiro's face in his helmet from... somewhere... and flagged down a caterer so he could stick it in a glass of champagne. "You know, we all thought you were hung up on... uh... does she know?"

Gwen made the webshooter gesture, and Deadpool sighed. "Oh, good. I was hoping I wouldn't have to tiptoe. I mean, I'm very subtle, but it's draining. Anyways. Where was I?"

"You were leaving," Johnny suggested.

"Right. Sage advice from an older, cooler, sexier, better-smelling superhero. We all thought you were hung up on Spider-Man, but he's been off the market for a while now. Normally, I'd laugh at your misery and move on, but I'm currently full of champagne and pretty sure nothing I say here will affect the universe in any meaningful way. Sort of like this is all a side story. You remember those comics way back before you were born that were all about 'what if'? Yeah, one of those." Deadpool sipped champagne through his silly straw. "Anyways. Spider-Man. Great name, by the way. Top-notch stuff. Anyways, he's happy right now, right?"

Gwen waved over at where Peter and Hiro were robot dancing with Baymax and a very confused Vision. Tony Stark was chatting up Peter's aunt on the other side of the dance floor.

"Right," Deadpool said. He sighed and gave a dreamy look to the dance floor. "Oh, to be young and so in love little kids go 'ew, kissing' instead of 'ew, that man has a super-grody face.' Well. You could get revenge. I'm thinking shaving cream and land mines."

"I'm not covering anyone in shaving cream," Johnny said, ignoring the bit about the mines.

"Well, then I guess you're not really mad. My dad-the one that isn't me-used to say that if you're not mad enough to waterboard somebody with hygiene products, you're not really mad. Anyways, I'm bored now. Ta ta, Flick-my-Bic, ta ta terrific teenage tatas!" He stood up and hurried over to Bobby Drake, who immediately started bickering with him.

"What the hell was that?" Gwen asked.

"Hurricane Deadpool," Johnny muttered. "Let's go get plastered someplace else." He stood up, offering a hand to help Gwen up. "Hey, are you happy for them?"

"Yeah," Gwen said. "I guess so."

+----+

"You know, usually when I wake up and there's a girl in my bed, she's naked, and I'm there too."

Gwen flipped Johnny off and went to go pour coffee. Peter had only ever taken her to the Baxter Building once, but apparently once was enough. "So how weird is it that Deadpool got married before Peter did?"

"Well, I think he had a thing with either Thanos or the literal incarnation of death that was pretty serious." Johnny poked at his waffles. "Did you punch me last night?"

Gwen nodded. "You got fresh, so I hit you really hard. Thanks for the pajamas. I couldn't have slept in that gown."

"Well, not before it got ripped," Ben said from behind the Daily Bugle. "Pretty sure it's an okay blanket now." He shook the newspaper a bit to straighten out some article, then shuffled it up through his hands a little.

"I can't believe I let a girl borrow my clothes without getting laid." Johnny hadn't actually eaten any of his waffles yet. He was contemplating trying to burn them so Sue would think he had and maybe not catch that he was wickedly hung over. He figured that would probably set off the smoke alarm. Gwen set down a mug of coffee in front of him. He grabbed it and made a face, but started sipping anyway.

"You are not fucking me," Gwen said conversationally.

There was a scream from the other room, which Johnny was grateful for, because he hadn't come up with anything witty beyond pointing out that girls he invited over for the night usually had sex with him. He chugged his coffee and hurried off to find Sue embracing Reed tightly just outside the bathroom. Johnny stared at his sister, and Reed stared over her head at Johnny and Gwen. Ben pounded into the hallway and stopped short when he saw the enormous smile on Reed's face.

"Reed? Bro, what's up?" Johnny asked.

"Sue has been feeling a little ill recently. We've gone through the whole range of possible illnesses and just successfully diagnosed her." Reed's too-wide smile went from regular-creepy to smug-creepy. "She's pregnant."

Gwen let out a little scream and hangover-shuffled to hug Sue. Ben shoved Johnny forward, and was the last to join the big group hug.

+----+

"I can't believe you started hanging out with Gwen," Peter said irritably. He threw himself down off the ledge he was perched on and deflected the car the Goblin had thrown down into the street instead of into Reed's face. Hiro jetted around him, firing off little webbing-pellets that smacked hard into Scorpion's face and left the animalistic villain laid out on the ground. Baymax bounded over Ben, roaring defiantly and picking up Scorpion to throw him at Doc Ock. Johnny followed Peter down and threw a wave of flames at Venom. Venom shrieked and stopped trying to kill Peter in favor of running away.

"She's nice," Johnny said. "I mean, it's kinda neat to have a girl who's not a girlfriend."

"I still don't believe you're not at least trying," Peter said conversationally. "Cover me." He ran over to one of the boxcars that were strewn around the trainyard, crawled under it, and the whole thing lifted into the air. Doc Ock turned from throwing a de-webbed Scorpion back into the fight, yelped, and dodged right into Baymax as he tried to evade Peter's throw. 

"Of course I'm trying," Johnny said. "Gwen is super-doable except for the part where she doesn't want me." He threw a few fireballs in the general direction of the Vulture to force him to break off his assault.

"She wants you," Peter said. "Hey, get me up there, would you?"

Johnny flamed on, grabbed Peter's hand with a carefully-flameless hand, and started chasing the Vulture. "You really think she wants me?"

"Oh, hell yeah she does. Just not as a person. If you were a sexbot, though, she'd be all over you." Peter pointed, and Johnny moved smoothly to change course.

"You know me, Bug-Breath. I basically am a sexbot."

"Uh huh." Peter's hand tightened on Johnny's and he watched as a line of web smacked into the Vulture's back from above. He let go and Peter dropped, throwing the Vulture badly off course. Johnny dove, streaking past the Goblin and harrying him away from Hiro, who was starting to get a little overwhelmed. He didn't do open superfights much, but Sue was sufficiently pregnant that she had handed over her spot on the team temporarily to Hiro and Baymax, asserting that Hiro had some kind of cloaking device and the two of them put together were maybe almost her equal in a fight.

It was a better decision than Johnny had expected it to be.

Goblin turned his attention on Johnny, and for a moment it was a faceoff. Johnny knew better than to let Goblin get into a faceoff with him, because Osborn was smart, and he would figure out a way to kick Johnny's ass given enough time. He charged, and Goblin dropped off of his glider, pulled a frikkin' _sword_ out of a hidden compartment, and slashed a line of agony across Johnny's left leg. Johnny yelped and slammed into a building, his flames already failing. The window he hit didn't help, shattering and spraying him with both molten and broken glass. He saw Hiro swooping in to join the fight again, this time unleashing a torrent of powerful exotic attacks that staggered the Goblin. Johnny flopped back on the floor. He heard Hiro yell in pain, and he squeezed his eyes shut, rolling over to push himself up. "Come on, Sparky," he mumbled. "You can do this. You can do this. Fuck that guy. He's an asshole." Johnny focused, trying to call up the flames over the truly unprecedented pain of his injury. "And you know what to do with assholes. You..." he pushed himself up. "You fuck them." His flames finally came back, and he barreled out of the building again just as Goblin slammed Hiro into a wall. The supervillain was preparing a pumpkin-bomb, and Johnny was in too much pain for things like tactics and precision. He just shoulder-checked the Goblin at better than a hundred miles an hour. He could feel his shoulder dislocate, which was what typically happened in these situations, and the Goblin fell off his glider and arrowed into the ground ten stories below. Johnny circled back, but the glider was already moving. Goblin hopped back up on it, significantly less spry than usual, and yelled "You'll pay for that, Johnny Storm!" as he fled.

Johnny let himself drop the last ten feet to the ground.

+----+

Daily Bugle, November 22, 2015

FANTASTIC FIVE DEFEND SHIELD SHIPMENT

A cross-country shipment of what SHIELD agent Phil Coulson called "exotic materials" in an interview this morning was nearly stolen by a coalition of six supervillains, including such diverse enemies as Sandman, Vulture, Scorpion, and the Green Goblin. Fortunately, the Fantastic Five (including temporary members Baymax and Hiro Takachiho, filling in for The Invisible Woman), intervened, and with some help from the Great Lakes Avengers, the shipment was returned to SHIELD custody.  
Human Torch Johnny Storm was reportedly injured in the fighting, but is recovering in the Baxter Building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was petty of Johnny to give them marshmallow launchers. He knows Peter can evade the marshmallow attacks way better than Hiro.
> 
> Boy, Johnny sure is italics-ey today.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went to go see Thor: Ragnarok today. It was amazing, and unexpectedly hilarious.

"I can't believe you," Peter said. "You're not even his girlfriend? Come on, Gwen."

"So in order to be worried about someone, I have to be fucking them?" Gwen looked up from the magazine she was reading. She'd been taking up turns at Johnny's bedside after the fight. Goblin had put something on the blade of his sword that reacted badly with Johnny. Venom's getaway had left Peter with a sprained wrist and a cracked rib, and Sandman had actually managed to injure Ben through sheer attrition, not to mention how bad the abrasions and bruising Hiro was recovering from had been, but none of them had been poisoned, and none of them was in a coma.

Sue felt incredibly guilty, even though Peter was positive she couldn't have done anything about it. And Gwen was sitting by Johnny's bedside, waiting for him to wake up. The hospital had refused to treat him on the grounds that they didn't know how to do so safely, so he was in the medical lab in the Baxter Building, which was only designed for one person, and that was hard, because Sue's pregnancy was showing signs of extreme weirdness, so twice a day she had to get checked over by Reed, which meant that everyone had to leave, and they had to squeeze in with Johnny, and the whole thing was pretty inefficient. Peter had told Reed that he should probably expand the medical lab after Peter joined the team officially, but he'd never gotten around to it.

"Gwen, you don't have to be fucking him to be worried, it's just that it's been three days and you haven't left his side unless you had to."

"Peter, don't be gross," Gwen said. "I've showered, I've taken care of my needs. You don't need to assume I only pay attention because I want to fuck him. It may have been that shallow with you, but he's actually capable of friendship."

Peter rocked back in his seat a little. "Jesus, Gwen. Try pulling your punches once in a while. I know we have kind of a past, but..."

Gwen squeezed the bridge of her nose. The bright light from the window was glinting off the waxed floor, spearing into Peter's eyes and probably giving Gwen a headache, too. "I'm sorry, Peter. That was out of line. Look, I know you have a hard time having real friendships because everybody in high school decided you were kind of a dick, but I know that's not the same as... as you not being capable. It's just that you've always had a hard time separating friendship from romance and it fucks people over."

"Oh, are we talking openly about this now? How long was I out? Was it really that long?" Johnny's voice was creaky from disuse, and Gwen gasped and threw herself at him in a fierce hug. Peter was right behind her, throwing his arms around both of them and turning to call for Reed over his shoulder.

Sue rushed in before Reed made it, and pushed Peter and Gwen aside to embrace her brother.

"Look, Gwen, can we please talk about this? Later, I mean?" Peter looked over at where Reed was moving in to examine Johnny carefully. "This isn't really the time, but it's important."

Gwen nodded gently, and they watched while Reed did full blood workups and ran some sort of portable MRI over Johnny's head, frowning worriedly at the hologram of Johnny's brain that the machine projected in front of him. Finally, Reed cleared Johnny to have visitors, two at a time. Gwen and Sue went first, then Reed and Ben, and finally Peter and Hiro.

"Man, you got fucked up," was the first thing Johnny said when they came in, and Peter looked over at Hiro, who was bruised and battered, with bandages on his arms and face.

"You just spent three days in a coma," Hiro shot back.

Johnny grinned. "Naturally, Peter's fine. Does he have superfeet yet, Hiro?"

"Superfeet?" Peter asked.

Hiro shook his head. "His feet are perfect."

Johnny rolled his eyes. "Typical. Well, Peter, did you hash things out with Gwen?"

"We're talking about it on Tuesday. How are you feeling?"

"Like shit." Johnny sighed. "Reed kept talking about polonium and thallium. It was mind-numbing."

Peter blanched and grabbed for Johnny's hand. He squeezed a little harder than he meant to and forced his grip to loosen when Johnny winced. "Polonium? He really said polonium?" Johnny nodded. "Oh, shit. No wonder he wouldn't tell me what it was. I would've freaked out really bad."

"You just survived polonium poisoning?" Hiro said in a tone of quiet astonishment.

"Goblin put fucking polonium on his sword like a lunatic," Peter said.

"At least it won't be there for long," Hiro pointed out reasonably.

"No, it'll turn into lead in... what, a year and a half?" Peter said.

"One year, three months, twelve days." Johnny sighed. "According to Reed. At least, given the size of Goblin's blades and stuff. You look terrified. I guess this stuff is pretty horrible?"

Peter sighed. "Polonium 210 is lethal in nanogram doses. I was so scared, Johnny, and if I'd known that was what it was, I wouldn't have slept for days."

Johnny shuddered. "Why did I survive, then?"

Peter shrugged. "You might ask Reed to see if you emit alpha particles like crazy when you flame on." He squeezed Johnny's hand. "I don't know what we would have done if we'd lost you."

+----+

Gwen poked at her latte, looking over the table at Peter, and cleared her throat. "I guess you just don't see why I spend my time with him?"

Peter sighed. "Even the Times is speculating on whether you're engaged to him or just dating."

"Nope," Gwen said. "Peter, Johnny is my friend. He's important to me, and I like him. But Peter, the key thing here is that he was the other man. He's the reason you broke up with me. How fucked up would that be?"

"It would be kinda petty," Peter said, "if it wasn't based on compatibility."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "Do Johnny and I seem compatible?"

"Well, no, but Johnny and Vic are compatible like sodium and water."

"Oil and water are a better analogy, but I get your point." Gwen sighed. "Just because he likes to have poorly-chosen flings and call them relationships doesn't mean I'm into emotional self-flagellation."

Peter snorted. "I chose sodium because they have a lot of chemistry right up until the fires start, Gwen."

Gwen sipped her drink. After a minute, she said, "was it really polonium?"

"Yup." Peter pulled at his own hot chocolate. "It was very much polonium. Son of a bitch actually coated his blades in one of the most hideously deadly things in the world. Reed's been testing, and apparently, Johnny's body is used to alpha flux from when he flames on. If he wasn't doing the same general shit to himself that polonium does just by using his powers, he'd be dead. Reed said the alpha flux might be why Johnny gets all lethargic after he goes nova."

"Huh." Gwen shrugged. "That's novel. Anyways, I'm not dating him. I won't date him. He doesn't get anything from me."

Peter sighed. "Good. That would end in tears, Gwen."

+----+

"This is going to end in tears," Johnny insisted three months later when he dropped Peter off on Broadway.

"Hiro said it was a good idea," Peter said, grinning as Johnny dropped down next to him. "And, hey, you and Hiro get to hang out more, too."

"It's a patrol, Peter," Johnny said. 

"How did we hang out when we first met?" Peter asked. "Remind me?"

Johnny smirked. "That was..." Johnny looked around. There were people pointing cameras at them, and he glared at Peter. "You did this on purpose so I can't talk about certain stuff, didn't you?"

Peter sketched a look of wounded innocence. "I would never."

"Uh huh." Johnny grinned. "You are a devious little bastard."

"Guilty." Peter smirked sidelong at Johnny

"Look, if you need me to separate you from Gwen, just text me." Johnny squeezed Peter's shoulder. "I don't want to be dealing with the Incredible Sulk because you couldn't extract yourself from a tailspin conversation."

"If I feel the urge to turn blue and huge and start moping around the city, I'll let you know." Peter grinned. "Or to turn green and huge and start smashing shit, for that matter."

"Oh, that reminds me, I need to call Banner and ask him if he thinks I'm slowly turning radioactive." Johnny burst into flames and hovered up just above Peter's head. "Stay frosty, Sulk."

Johnny flew off, and a few minutes later, Gwen arrived to head out to the play with Peter. Reed had pulled something crazy to get Peter tickets to the show. Gwen insisted that he would never be able to completely get back in her good graces, but admitted that being ridiculously nice to her was a good start. 

When they left the theater, Peter was trying to do the really fast-paced bit about how Alexander Hamilton was fluent in French and giggling at his inability to frame the words. "Daveed Diggs is a Mutant," Peter said. "That's the only way he can do that."

"That's not even remotely true," Gwen laughed.

"It's his superpower. Super-rapping." There was a single spike of painfully-intense warning in the back of Peter's skull, and he looked up to see the Goblin streaking down out of the sky. Peter tried to shove Gwen back, but there were too many people coming out of the theater with them. Goblin's pumpkin bombs landed in front of him, and he reached down to pick them up and throw them back, but they were already pouring out gas. The strange, medicinal smell overwhelmed him before he even fully processed that everyone around him had dropped almost instantly.

+----+

The Goblin slapped him awake. "You must hold your liquor like a champ, Parker," he growled. His green face and frightening smile were made worse by the lights behind him. "I thought I'd wait for you to be awake. That way your little husband can watch your little heart break when I kill your friend there." He pointed to Gwen, lying at the edge of some sort of platform. Peter moved to attack, but Goblin shifted in response to the move and Peter froze. There was a camera pointed at him. He looked around. There were four cameras set up around him. They were standing in the cold March air on top of one of the support columns of the Brooklyn Bridge. Gwen was still out, in perfect reach to be kicked off the side, and Peter wasn't wearing his webshooters.

"Isn't the internet grand?" Goblin gloated. "Your deaths, live. But I'd better get a move on."

Goblin jumped towards Gwen. Peter rushed to tackle him, but he kicked her off.

"No!" Peter yelled.

The Goblin laughed. "Oh, but yes!"

+----+

J. Jonah Jameson stared at the obituary page. 

He was getting awfully tired of writing these damn things after supervillain attacks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all saw that character death warning up there, right?


	16. Chapter 16

Hiro rose up along the side of the bridge, and Johnny watched him jet away to the upper level, laying Gwen down on the pedestrian walkway. He saw Peter, lying on top of the Goblin below him, holding on to the surface of the bridge. Johnny knew it was impossible to pull Peter off of a surface he didn't want to let go of, provided it was something he could get a decent grip on at all. Goblin didn't try to push Peter off, which probably said something for Peter's luck.

He punched, instead. Peter's head snapped back, and Johnny charged in. He burned the cameras as Peter stumbled away from the Goblin, and Peter looked around, smiled a slightly feral smile, and charged the Goblin again.

"But that should have killed you," the Goblin complained petulantly as Peter grabbed him and slammed a fist hard into his gut. 

"Shut up," Peter suggested. A streak of flame came from the Manhattan side of the bridge, and Peter jumped to avoid the Goblin's glider. Goblin jumped with him, and they both landed on the glider.

"Who are you?" Goblin yelled.

Johnny flew alongside the struggling pair, Peter's nice suit jacket flapping in the wind, his pants pasted to his legs by his speed. Goblin got in a blow, and Peter dropped, caught the edge of the glider with one hand, and threw his good dress shoes into the East River one at a time as Goblin went through a series of maneuvers that would have thrown any normal human off the glider. Peter brought his legs up and stuck his feet to the bottom of the glider, letting go. Goblin let out a triumphant sound, and Johnny blasted him with fire. Goblin twisted around, grunted in puzzlement at the way his glider was performing, and accidentally interposed Peter between himself and Johnny.

Hiro streaked in on the other side, energy blasts and web pellets flying from his gauntlets while Peter threw himself up and over the glider, coming around to slam his feet into the Goblin's side. The Goblin nearly fell off his glider, but he caught himself on the edge of it, swinging around to the underside and throwing himself to the front.

Peter let out a shout as Goblin drew out the swords again, and he backed away to avoid the apparently-quite-deadly blades. Goblin didn't hit him with the swords. He caught him in the face with a fist. Peter dropped, caught a fingertip on the edge of the glider, and let out a frustrated yell. Goblin threw something at Hiro, and something at Johnny, and then a few more somethings at Hiro. The pain of a too-close explosion thudded through Johnny, and he tried to surround the glider with flames but only managed to create a sphere of fire somewhere up above him. He could see Hiro when he recovered, struggling with a knife in his shoulder. Peter was swinging himself around the glider again, but Goblin had predicted the move. He went to kick Peter as he came up, but Peter stopped. Goblin grunted, turned, and threw another knife at Hiro.

It hit square in the middle of Hiro's chest and bounced off his armor. Hiro charged in, and Goblin twisted around. He caught him in the blast from the glider's engines, spraying flames into a screaming Hiro's face. The finned helmet didn't cover his whole head, and Hiro reeled backwards just as Goblin leapt off his glider, latched onto Hiro's shoulders, and drove one of his swords through Hiro's chest.

Peter screamed, watching his husband stiffen with Goblin's sword in him, the end of it sticking obscenely out of Hiro's back. Goblin threw his other sword at Peter even as he leapt back towards his glider. Peter dropped, splashing into the East River, moving so fast that he skipped. Hiro jetted away more or less at random while Goblin cackled. Johny dove, and he found Peter spluttering as he swam. Johnny grabbed him, but Goblin was already attacking. "I'll kill him!" Peter yelled. Tears mixed with the water of the river, and he gripped Johnny's wrists so hard it hurt as Johnny ducked and wove to avoid Goblin's thrown weapons and bombs. His gaze followed Hiro to where Iron Man streaked in and caught him.

 _"Johnny, can you hear me?"_ Tony Stark's voice asked over Johnny's suit radio.

"Is he okay?" Johnny yelled.

There was a long silence, and Stark said, quietly into Johnny's ear, _"Johnny, he's gone."_

"Johnny," Peter said, gasping as Johnny set him down on top of a building. "Johnny, please..."

"He's gone," Johnny said.

Peter shrieked. "I'll kill him! I'll fucking-" He ducked to evade one of the Goblin's pumpkin bombs, catching it and smoothly throwing it back. Goblin howled with laughter, and Peter sobbed.

"No, you won't," Johnny said. "I will."

He turned to face Goblin and streaked towards him, slamming flaming fists into the supervillain. He'd never fought like this, not really. No team, no backup, just power on power, no holds barred. Goblin had killed Hiro, he had attacked Peter and Gwen, he'd killed Hiro and put that awful look on Peter's face, the one that said nothing could ever make it okay. Johnny screamed, heating up as Goblin's face slowly went from smirking to concerned, concerned to afraid. He tried to fly away, but Johnny stayed in front of his glider, heating up and heating up until he felt himself abandon the last vestiges of his control. He grabbed the collar of Goblin's stupid purple tunic and screamed as the flames poured out of his body, washed over the Goblin. He didn't think he'd ever burned so hot before. There was nothing left of the Goblin's clothes in an instant, nothing of his flesh in seconds. The glider exploded, and burning pieces of it spiraled into the river as Johnny's flames died down.

The world went black, and he felt Iron Man's arms catch him.

+----+

Peter was still soaked to the bone. The tracks of his tears trailed down a face pink from burns, from Johnny's flames unleashed so close to him. One of his hands covered his eyes, and the other clung to Johnny's. Johnny squeezed, and Peter gasped, looked at him, and sobbed again. They were in a medical room Johnny didn't recognize, somebody's la somewhere, although he wasn't certain whose or where. Logically, it couldn't be far. He heard voices coming closer, but he really didn't care who was coming. The white-hot rage was gone, replaced by a simmering emptiness and the memory of Peter's desolation. Johnny pulled Peter feebly towards him and hugged him tight as Peter continued to sob.

The door opened, and Reed and Sue hurried in, with Ben only moments behind. Baymax stood in the hallways outside. Vision was talking to him in gentle tones while Doctor Strange threw his hands up and walked away.

There were other beds in the room, and Johnny saw Hiro stretched out on one of them, the Goblin's sword laid down beside him. Another Doctor Strange was just stepping back from him, and he turned to look at Peter and Johnny while Sue, Reed, and Ben stopped before they could reach Peter and Johnny, the moment they were witnessing too tragically sacred to interrupt. Strange frowned over at them, then frowned at Peter, even more deeply. "I'm sorry, Peter," he said. "I... nobody could have done anything for him. He couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds. The blade went... it went straight through his heart."

Johnny's brain provided him a neatly devastating picture of Hiro's heart beating around the poisoned blade, each life-sustaining spasm shredding it further, driving blood into places it shouldn't be. Peter melted against his chest, and Johnny was too weak to do anything about it. He just cried into Peter's river-soaked hair and wished he could have taken Hiro's place, traded his life for Hiro's so that Peter would still have the one who had made him so happy.

+----+

The Fantastic Five didn't suit up again for months. The day Sue gave birth to a happy, healthy baby boy, Johnny flew to Peter's apartment and tapped on the window. Peter was asleep on the sofa. A pile of unopened mail lay on the coffee table, and Peter jumped and jostled awake, scattering paper all over the floor when his hands brushed the envelopes on the table. He spotted Johnny and let him in, and Johnny walked over to the mail. A lot of it was genuine mail, things addressed in careful handwriting that doubtlessly contained sympathies and tearful messages of hope. A charred spot was visible in the corner of the kitchen, and Peter followed Johnny's eyes to it. He shrugged. "Some dumbass mailed me a letter that set off my spidey-sense. I dropped it in the trash and the trash exploded."

Johnny blinked over at the charred spot and grabbed one of the letters that was still on the coffee table. He recognized Nick Fury's handwriting on the address. He tossed it down and picked up one from the floor. It was a past due notice, bright red lettering in all caps warning that the next action taken would be legal action. "Peter, how long has it been since you paid your bills?"

Peter shrugged. "What month is it?"

Johnny sat down hard on the sofa. "Peter, they're going to kick you out of here."

"Landlord loves me. Waived my rent for a year. I think they cut off my cell phone, though." Peter stood in the middle of the living room, looking around the apartment he used to share with Hiro like he'd lost something. Johnny almost expected to see Hiro come walking out of the bedroom, or in the front door. He hadn't been by Peter's place since Hiro died. It didn't occur to him until then, watching Peter all alone in his tiny one-bedroom apartment, but he'd been afraid. Afraid to see the most vital man he'd ever met rattling around inside of an apartment at once too big and too small.

"I'm taking you back to the Baxter Building," Johnny said. "I'm calling you a cab and we're leaving, and you're moving in."

"What, no," Peter said.

Johnny stood up. "Peter Benjamin Takachiho-Parker, you do not get a say in this." Johnny swept a hand at the pile of late notices and unread mail. "You are sitting here waiting for a lawyer to come in and tell you to come to court so you can get your pants sued off. Sue just had her baby, and you didn't even know she was in labor, and I understand that you're depressed, but I am not letting your self-destruct." Johnny started forwards, and he wasn't sure what he was going to do until he was holding Peter and Peter was crying into his shoulder. "I didn't go crawling around in the Negative Zone to pick up some crazy bullshit science thing so Reed could save my sister just to lose you when it all gets so much you can't... can't..."

"Johnny," Peter whispered. "I'm not... I'm not gonna..."

"I kinda don't believe you," Johnny said. He pulled out his phone, and when he walked into the Baxter Building late with Peter, Sue and Reed didn't object. They just put Peter up in the extra room that had been set up for him when Spider-Man officially joined.

+----+

Baymax hadn't moved since his charge died. He sat immobile in Reed's lab, and Peter sat in front of him, robotics toolkit open on the table he sat on, spider-suit on except for the gloves and mask. A few sparks flew from the open chest cavity of the synthformer. A change rippled over Baymax, green replacing the color of skin and clothing for a moment before he stubbornly reverted.

Johnny stared from the door as Peter choked back a sob and punched the unmoving robot. "Come on, goddammit!" He punched Baymax again, and Baymax wobbled and fell backwards with a resounding boom.

Johnny stepped in as Peter pounced on Baymax, pulling back one fist to strike hard. "Peter," Johnny said, catching his wrist. Peter looked at him and slowly relaxed. "Come on, Pete. Let's get you changed into regular clothes. You know, I think you scared the shit out of Rhino today." Peter nodded numbly and let himself be led out of the lab. He was far too smart to not recognize it as Johnny trying to distract him. Johnny got him into his bedroom and pulled out clothes, tossing them at Peter and sitting on the end of Peter's bed. "I talked to Uncle Ben yesterday," Johnny said. "He says your aunt bought you a new camera." Peter started changing into his clothes, taking off his spider-suit in front of Johnny without a moment's hesitation. He was wearing a pair of tight red boxer-briefs under it, and instead of putting clothes on, he sat down next to Johnny. "You should come to my exclusive with People Magazine tomorrow."

"That would make it not an exclusive anymore," Peter pointed out.

Johnny gripped his hand. "You think I give a shit? Peter, you can't just work on that robot all day every day."

"He should be working," Peter said. "He's not broken. Johnny, I can't wake him up, and... and he... he's all I have left."

Johnny turned his whole body to face Peter and pulled his hand to his chest. "You have me. And Sue, and Reed, and Ben and Franklin, and Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and all of the Avengers, and MJ and Gwen."

Peter leaned back and pulled Johnny down with him. His strength, his dense muscle giving him weight as an advantage, it all let him scoot up on the bed and pull Johnny close against him. "It's all I have left of him, though."

"That's... I... I'm sorry, Peter. Peter, has it occurred to you that Baymax is mourning, too?"

Peter blinked. "I... he..."

Johnny's arm stole around Peter's waist. "It's okay, Peter. It's okay. I'm here."

+----+

"What's the pettiest thing you've ever done to someone you loved?" 

_I let Peter Parker slip through my fingers._ Johnny sighed. He looked up at the cameras. "I'm sorry. I don't want to answer that question right now." The reply set off a flurry of flashbulbs, including Peter's camera clicking away. "I lost a very close friend not so long ago, and another very close friend" Johnny looked at Peter "lost his husband, and that question feels too frivolous and I don't want to tell another story about how someone I think is attractive might have been offended by me, and I don't want to tell jokes about mean things I did to my family. Ask me again some other time, okay? I'll answer it again someday."

+----+

Franklin said his first words while Johnny and Peter were babysitting. Sue, Reed, and Ben were with Tony Stark and Doctor Strange, fighting Galactus somewhere in one of the various star systems that Earth enjoyed a loose alliance with. Johnny had been left behind on uncle duty, and Peter had been told in no uncertain terms to stay with him. Peter was giving Franklin a bottle, which was difficult because Franklin had hit every milestone so far stupidly early and was cruising stubbornly away from Peter. 

"Come on, come to Spidey," Peter said, and Franklin paused, because he loved when Peter picked him up and walked on the ceiling with him. Then he saw the bottle of formula and started hurrying away again, and Johnny cut him off. Franklin was probably a supergenius, but he was also not yet six months old and lacked the coordination to truly walk, however much he might try. Johnny scooped him up and Peter grabbed him out of Johnny's arms. Franklin scowled. "We have to switch the baby to formula early, Peter," Peter muttered mutinously. "I'll be out in space and off saving the world, and he needs to be used to formula so he'll eat when I'm away." He sighed. "Well, Sue, he hates it."

Franklin already knew he couldn't outstruggle Peter, and he submitted to being fed with a sort of babyish reluctance. Johnny smiled over at Peter. Privately, he thought Peter looked incredible with a baby in his arms, and it was driving him a little crazy to live with Peter when he was so very unavailable. Watching Peter feed or change Franklin, grumbling good-naturedly because he loved the little baby, he really did, was a kind of torture.

Johnny was, he knew, irreparably in love with Peter. He just couldn't do anything about it, so he turned back to his phone and snapped a picture of Peter holding Franklin to post on Facebook. "Look... at... these... cuties," Johnny muttered as he typed out the post.

"Johnny, there is formula in my hair and spitup on my shirt, do not post-"

Johnny smirked at Peter as he hit the post button, and Peter sighed. "You're such a dillhole," he said.

Franklin spat out the bottle, looked right at Peter, and said "di-ho."

Johnny and Peter both froze for about five seconds, and then Peter started cackling, which set off Johnny, and Franklin's bottle wound up abandoned on the end table while Johnny and Peter whooped and laughed and somewhere in there, Franklin spit up all over Johnny, and they got it all cleaned up and they were still laughing about it when Franklin went down for the night. Once Franklin was asleep, and the baby monitor was going and they were in the living room a good ways off from his bedroom, the laughter redoubled again, and Peter clung to Johnny.

Three minutes or so into that, something broke inside of Peter and he went from laughter to tears, and so did Johnny. They cried on each other's shoulders until they were both exhausted, until they fell asleep cuddled up together on the couch and were awoken by Franklin crying to be changed, or fed, or changed and fed. After their impromptu nap, they weren't tired, and they sat up in the living room clutching cups of coffee while Franklin tired himself out cruising in frustrated circles around his playpen. Finally, Peter said, quietly, "it's your fault I was in my underwear with my dick flopping out when I met Hiro, you know. He used to tease me about it all the time."

Johnny turned a startled glance on Peter. "You... You, um... You were wearing the ones with my face all over them, weren't you?"

Peter smiled, just a little. "Leave it to you to remember your face all over my butt."

Johnny grabbed for Peter's hand, and Peter let him catch it. They talked about Hiro through the rest of the night.

+----+

Daily Bugle, December 6, 2016

SUPERHEROES TAKE TURNS AS SANTA  
Photos by Peter Parker

The Baxter Building has played host to a Christmas village since December first this year, and local heroes have been getting in on the fun. "It feels good," said Spider-Man when asked about taking his turn in the red suit, a turn he took, like most of the heroes, in costume under the hat and beard. "We've had a bad year. We lost Hiro, and not many people took it harder than me and Johnny. It's good to give joy to someone by letting a little kid meet one of their heroes."  
And meet heroes they have. Sporadic appearances by Iron Man, Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Johnny Storm, Spider-Man, Squirrel-Girl, and Vision are planned for the rest of the month, although the position of Santa won't be filled continuously by heroes as it has been for the last five days. The schedule of superhero appearances as Santa is printed below.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearly to the end of this fic.

Johnny yawned for the third time, and Peter frowned. "Come on, Torch. He's going to wake up in a couple more hours. We both need to sleep, and you're on, like, your third Coke."

Johnny looked down at his half-full soda. "Ze caffeine, it does nuzzink!" Johnny exclaimed sleepily. Peter suppressed a snort. "I can keep going. Peter, you need to talk about this stuff."

Peter sighed. "Johnny, Hiro would have made me go to bed, like, an hour ago."

Johnny smiled ruefully. His eyes darted from Peter's mug of tea to his face, from his face to the table, and Johnny chugged his Coke, tossed it towards the recycling, and stood up. Peter followed him down the hall, snagging the baby monitor from the kitchen table. Johnny's room was the third one on the right. Peter's was the fifth on the left. They stopped at the door to Johnny's, and Peter's eyes roved over the decorations pinned up on it. Somehow, Johnny's room managed to survive almost every supervillain attack totally unscathed. The only sign of its trial and tribulations over the years was a lot of mild singeing around the edges of the door and one long gouge in the wood veneer that exposed the steel core. 

It was covered in decorative touches. Johnny had gone through a brief phase of charring designs into things when he was seventeen, and had burned a flame pattern into the door, which curled around the Spider-Man sticker Peter had stuck to the door a few days after the Spideymobile debacle. There was a racing poster, and a little corkboard covered in pictures, mostly of Johnny and Peter or Johnny and Sue. The biggest picture was of Johnny, Peter, MJ, Doreen, and Hiro. MJ was riding around on Doreen's shoulders behind the couch, while Johnny sat between Peter and Hiro, an arm slung over each of their shoulders. There was a copy of the first picture of Spider-Man that Peter had sent in to the Daily Bugle, too, and a small collection of Johnny's answers to The Question was taped to the door. Peter's favorite was afforded pride of place right at eye level.

_JS: I accidentally transposed two numbers when I gave Myles my number last night. That's petty, right? It's three-five, not five-three._

Peter remembered taping the clipped-out answer to the door. He'd been taking pictures when that one happened, letting a sprained wrist rest a little. Hiro had been off at the store, and when he came home, Peter told him about it, and they'd laughed. Johnny opened the door and leaned on the doorframe. "I'm gonna burn all those off someday," he said. 

Peter rolled his eyes. "Sure you are." he followed Johnny into the bedroom, plopping down on the end of the bed after a quick stop to leave the quiescent baby monitor on the dresser. "Hiro taped up the one about shaving Doreen's tail."

Johnny was halfway into the bathroom attached to his bedroom, but he leaned out and yelled "What? I thought that was Ben!"

"Hiro thought it was hilarious." 

Johnny brushed his teeth and stripped out of his t-shirt. When he came back in, he pulled down his jeans. He was wearing the Spider-Man boxers Peter had given him for Christmas last year. Peter raised an eyebrow, and when Johnny turned back to look at him, he blushed. Peter cracked a smile. Johnny sat down next to him. "I won't burn that one off," he said. "It's important to keep some of his things around."

Peter inched closer to him, reached out, and hugged him tight. Johnny was warm and dry against him, and he smelled faintly of toothpaste and formula and heat. Johnny sighed and leaned back. Peter leaned with him until they were lying there on the end of his bed together. Peter felt himself tearing up a little, and Johnny let it happen, scooted up the bed, and got Peter comfortable while he cried himself out. Finally, the tears stopped coming, and Peter said, a little hollowly, "I know you loved him."

Johnny patted gently at the top of Peter's head. "I loved him for you. He made you so happy, and I'd love anyone who did that."

Peter cuddled into Johnny's side. "Narcissism isn't a good look on you," he mumbled as he began to drift off.

"Pete," Johnny began, turning to look at him, but Peter's eyes drifted closed and he wandered into dreams of wandering around the Hundred Acre Wood with Pooh and Iron Man, trying to explain how he wasn't really supposed to be here, he was helping his friend to babysit his nephew, and the kid was practically Peter's nephew, too, so he really had to get back, but there were too many giraffes in the way, and couldn't Pooh just call in a park ranger to help move them.

The baby monitor startled him awake, and he found himself tangled up with Johnny, who looked over at the monitor unit on his dresser. They disentangled themselves and both stood up to go deal with Franklin. When Franklin saw Peter coming in ahead of Johnny, he babbled happily for a few moments and then exclaimed "di-ho!"

"Sue is gonna kill us if she ever figures out what that means," Johnny said.

Peter scooped up the baby. "Yep. All because you're the dillhole that had to post a picture on Facebook."

"Di-ho!" Franklin shouted excitedly.

+----+

"You're so beautiful."

Peter stopped short in the middle of taking off the Santa suit that went over the Spider-suit. His last appearance as Santa in the lobby had just ended with him passing off duty to "the real Santa," a man named Greg who always made a show of thanking the superheroes for filling in for him before he took their place. Somehow, Peter didn't think shrugging out of a red and white jacket covered in all sorts of sticky spots from the residue left behind by various children was exactly "beautiful," and he had doubts about standing around in the kitchen wearing big red trousers over the Spider-suit, too, but there was Johnny, holding Franklin and staring at him from the door like Peter had been replaced by a classical painting. Johnny was wearing his uniform, still smelling slightly of hot unstable molecules. 

Peter could recall Uncle Ben telling him about the moment he fell in love with Aunt May. It had been a few years ago, after a time when Peter came home from an evening at the Baxter Building. Uncle Ben had sat out on the porch with him and allowed him a single beer, and Johnny had been dating Vic for a little while, and Peter asked how Uncle Ben had known he was in love, and Uncle Ben had pulled at his own beer and replied, "we were in our twenties. We'd been dating for about two months, and she decided it was time she met my family, so she asked to come over and visit with my brother. The whole visit went well, and she loved you to bits, and I went to talk to your mother for a minute in the other room, and May came to get me, and she had this little baby in her arms, just as natural as you please, and I just... I knew. I was going to spend the rest of my life with this woman."

Johnny readjusted Franklin, and it occurred to Peter that he had started breathing kinda fast under his mask. He pulled it off and closed his eyes. He counted to ten, then did it backwards, then opened his eyes again. Johnny was still watching him. "Th... thanks," Peter mumbled. He hurried off to his room. Johnny had burned the Spider-Man logo into the door when Peter moved in. Peter changed, but it took him a few tries to get his pants on right, and when he emerged, Johnny was sitting in the living room. Franklin was crawling around the floor, eyeing the Christmas tree like he was plotting how best to get around the gates protecting it and pull it down. Peter sat on the couch next to Johnny, and Johnny bumped his shoulder softly.

"No pressure," Johnny said. "Just sayin'."

Peter shook his head. "Johnny, I'm really... I can't hear that kind of thing from someone who doesn't... I just can't. Right now."

Johnny squeezed Peter's hand, just a quick reach and grasp. "Sorry. I..." Johnny swallowed, and Peter snuggled into him.

"Just be my friend right now. I know this is where you'd start wanting some kind of sexual healing, but I can't. Not without love. Not right now."

Johnny was silent for a long time. Eventually, Sue came in and collected up Franklin to put him down for his nap. While the room was empty, Johnny spoke up again. "So, if I want to have a fling, I gotta wait?"

"Yeah," Peter said. "But it's us. I mean, we'll have a fling sometime. You can kinda tell. I just can't take having a fling if you don't..."

Johnny squeezed him up tight against him. "I understand."

They fell asleep on the couch together.

+----+

Peter fiddled with the new camera Aunt May had bought him. Johnny was being kinda boring in his interview with People Magazine. He always wound up giving his first semi-exclusive to them every year, and the result was usually a dull retrospective about superheroes in the previous year. The reporter had gotten through most of the standard questions, and Peter almost rolled his eyes when she asked The Question. Johnny had refused to answer for months with a variation on the excuse that he was still mourning over Hiro. This time, though, when The Question got asked, he sucked in a deep breath and sat up a little straighter, a sort of determined look on his face.

"What's the pettiest thing you've ever done to someone you love?"

"I spent about a week pretending I'd forgotten Spider-Man's secret identity once."

Peter nearly dropped his five hundred dollar camera at Johnny's declaration. The interviewer chuckled. "Not what I meant by someone you love," she said.

Johnny rolled his eyes. "I know what you meant."

"So you and Spider-Man are dating?" she asked.

Johnny smirked at Peter. "I think he knows how I feel."

Peter sucked in a deep breath. The interviewer pressed. "And how you feel is?"

"Head over heels in love. Honestly, it's been like that for years. It's just never been the right time." Johnny glanced at the clock on the wall. "Can we wrap this up?"

The reporter nodded numbly. There was a look on her face like she'd just won the lottery. Peter couldn't blame her. He felt his fingers too loose and shaking on the camera. He put it away instead of risking dropping it. When Johnny left, Peter followed him into the elevator down the ground floor. They stood in silence until they got to Johnny's car outside. Johnny closed the door and leaned back. He was trembling. Peter doubted anyone else would have noticed, except maybe Sue. Peter watched him, leaning back against the seat in the gorgeously-restored '72 Mustang. The smell of leather mingled with Johnny's own smell, that heat-and-something-else Peter could never fully identify. 

"Years?" Peter asked.

Johnny nodded. "Yeah. I just... I know you don't feel the same. We can have a fling, but not a real... you know, not a real..." A single tear squeezed out of his closed eyes.

"Drive us home," Peter said shakily. He pulled the lever to recline his seat as Johnny drove.

How had it gotten like this? He'd never been shy about being attracted to Johnny. But then, he'd never said he felt anything more. And now, after Hiro... could he? Peter stared at the headliner of Johnny's car. He thought of Johnny, standing in the kitchen with Franklin on his hip. He thought of Johnny, on top of the Statue of Liberty, slapping him because he had no other way to react to learning who he was. He thought of Johnny, hovering over him in that same spot, thought of him leaning down to kiss him, and he almost whined at the thought of how intense Johnny's kiss had been. All those years ago.

He thought of Johnny in the interview, fixing him with an intense look.

He thought of Hiro, laughing with him and Johnny, and Johnny.... practically pushing him towards Hiro.

"You wanted me and him to get together," Peter said as the garage under the Baxter Building swallowed them.

"I wanted to distract you," Johnny told him. "You flirted with me, and I couldn't... I couldn't let it be a fling."

Peter sat up. He stepped out of the car the instant Johnny stopped it, and when Johnny started for the elevator, Peter vaulted over the car and caught up with him in three long strides. "Johnny, I flirted with you for a reason."

"You wanted me. You didn't love me." Johnny stared at the floor, at his three hundred dollar shoes. He looked miserable.

"Don't tell me what I felt," Peter whispered.

Johnny looked up. Peter wondered what he was expecting. His mouth was slightly open, just hanging there. "I loved you. I would have been with you if you'd just asked. I thought you were just brushing off my flirting because you weren't interested. That night we watched all the Alien movies, when I fell asleep on you, the night that made me tell you who I was...I think I've been falling in love with you since then."

"But what about Hiro?" Johnny asked.

Peter sighed. "I loved him. For real. And I thought you didn't want me. It would have torn me apart. It might have. I don't know. But I couldn't have you, and he was... I can love someone before you and still love you."

Johnny's trembling had gotten worse, and he looked about to faint. Peter grabbed his hand and pulled him in close. He pressed a kiss to Johnny's lips, a slow pressure, closed-mouth but sweet and needy, and Johnny slowly stilled, he held Peter tight, he leaned against him.

"I love you," Johnny whispered.

"I love you, too," Peter sighed back.

"I don't want to intrude on... you're still mourning."

Peter rested his head on Johnny's shoulder. "I'll be mourning for the rest of my life. You can step back and watch it happen, or you can help me through it by my side."

"By your side." Johnny squeezed Peter's hand and led him to the elevator. 

They held each other as they rode up, and when they got off the elevator, Peter took charge. He led Johnny through the entry hall by the hand. Ben and Reed were in the kitchen, playing a round of the Pokemon trading card game. "Hey, Hothead," Ben began.

"Not now, Ben," Peter said. "He's mine for the next few hours."

"I think I'm yours longer than that," Johnny said as they crossed the room.

"I'll loan you out to him in a few hours, though," Peter insisted, and they were out of the room before they could see Ben and Reed's reaction. Peter opened the door to Johnny's bedroom because it was closer, but Johnny pulled him back out of it.

"Your room," Johnny said. "I want to make love to you somewhere neither of us has ever been with anyone else."

Peter nodded and took Johnny to his bedroom.

+----+

Peter was dozing lightly against Johnny's bare chest when there was a knock at the door. Apparently, Reed or Ben had told Sue where they could be found when she came looking for them. She didn't wait for an answer before she yelled "which one of you assholes is the reason my baby just called me a dillhole?"

Peter and Johnny both burst out laughing.

+----+

Uncle Ben whistled softly. Aunt May smiled at the big double-room, and Peter reached up to rub at the back of his neck. "It's okay?"

Uncle Ben nodded. "It's great, son. Are you sure about this, though?"

Peter nodded. "I love him. It's not going to change, and people are going to know who I am. I'm not careful enough to stop that, so we might as well move you guys into the Baxter Building where we can keep you a little safer."

Aunt May hugged him. "I think this will work out just fine."

Peter hugged her back. "I think so, too."

+----+

Daily Bugle, May 29, 2017

SPIDER-MAN UNMASKS  
Article by Peter Takachiho-Parker

I've been taking pictures of Spider-Man for years, and I've been keeping the secret of his identity even longer. For the safety of people who might be target if Spider-Man's identity were known, the world didn't know, but there's only so far the secret can be kept.  
The truth is that I am Spider-Man. I was bitten by an irradiated spider years ago and gained the powers I use to fight with the rest of the Fantastic Five. Last week I moved the people I needed to protect into the Baxter Building, where they enjoy the protection of all five of us, plus any other superheroes who might come along.   
I didn't choose to unmask because I want fame, but because I want to be honest. I lived with my husband until his death, pretending to be an ordinary citizen whose ties to Spider-Man kept me in touch with the Fantastic Five. I am about to enter a new phase in my life, and I choose to enter it with not only my own eyes, but those of the public open.  
Now that I've told the world who I am, I have one question for a very special person in my life.  
Jonathan Lowell Spencer Storm, will you marry me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may do a separate fic with just the first sex scene between them sometime...
> 
> Only one chapter to go. I may revisit this world from time to time, but I know for a fact I have one or two other Peter Parker/Johnny Storm fics in me.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! 
> 
> SLASH FIC'S ON! COME AND GET IT! *rings dinner bell*

The headlines were awful. About a million different magazines were calling Johnny a homewrecker, and it was a little hard to take. It was impossible to wreck a home that only had one person in it. Or at least, it was impossible to do it by faithfully dating and getting engaged to that one person. Johnny set down one of the dozen Japanese hero-tracker magazines that had sent him an issue specially to make sure their scolding got across. "We're never going to be able to go to Japan," he said as Peter strolled into the kitchen in his spider-pants and nothing else. Well, underwear, obviously, because otherwise his dick would be flopping around really visibly, but that didn't count.

"I hear Aiko is just disappointed you never hooked up with both me and Hiro." Peter opened the fridge and pulled out a Red Bull. He sat down at the table with Johnny and continued on, "then again, Aiko was, like, twenty when Hiro joined up, and he was fifteen, and they definitely had a thing, so she might not be the best reference point, on account of she wanted her some not-yet-legal dick."

Johnny smirked. "Dude, she just has good taste. Me, lording it over two nerd-kings in the bedroom? Someone has shot that porno with a lookalike."

"You just have some kind of a voyeurism fetish," Peter said. "And Johnny, you don't lord anything over me. You have to wait for the webbing to dissolve before you can get to sleep three times a week."

"Reed!" Ben called down the hall, "I'm takin' up night watch duties on account of I'm never sleeping again!"

As Ben stumped into the kitchen, Reed's voice followed him. "Tell them to stop getting into sexual detail in the kitchen."

Peter rolled his eyes, and Johnny rolled back, then smiled and turned to Ben. "Peter has a-"

"Has a what?" Uncle Ben interrupted from behind him. Johnny jumped.

"A great sense of humor," Johnny squeaked. "Sir."

Uncle Ben smirked, starting up the coffee pot. "Yeah. We could hear you laughing with him all night the other day." Peter's Red Bull came out of his nose. "If I'm not mistaken, you laughed four times, which was pretty impressive. You might want to keep in mind that we all live on the same floor. Try to keep the laughing down."

Johnny was pretty sure he'd turned _magenta,_ or maybe become one of those exotic kinds of stars Reed liked to go on about when they went to space.

+----+

It wasn't all bad press, though. After Peter gave an interview to the Daily Bugle (Jameson nearly had an aneurysm when Peter outed himself, then insisted on a real exclusive in exchange for publishing the announcement), a lot of people were persuaded to see Johnny as what Peter needed. 

"It's better than the press I get sometimes," Tony Stark told him at a party in early July. Steve Rogers was seated down the table, laughing and talking with that Bucky guy he liked to hang around with. Bucky was cool in a kind of shaggy, sexy way, and Stark had been shooting jealous looks at him all night. Johnny pointed down at Rogers and Bucky. "Are they doing the dangly-dangle-hoop-de-hoo? I mean, you seem like you wanna set him on fire a little."

Stark sighed. "I don't even know, kid. Look, you want my advice, never love anyone."

Johnny shrugged. "Dude, if Rogers hates you, you know it's probably because you went against him over that whole Superhuman Registration Act thing when I was, like, twelve."

Stark's head thudded to the table.

+----+

The most surprising was the press that was interested in neither slandering nor praising him, because once they realized that The Question had finally been answered honestly and was therefore boring, curiosity about Johnny quickly turned lascivious. He supposed it made sense. He'd been voted sexiest superhero alive basically the instant magazines thought they could get away with it, and he'd always stayed at the top of somebody's official list somewhere. It made sense that Out and The Advocate and XY had scrambled to get the juicy interviews. While Peter was giving exclusives to Time and the New England Journal of Applied Biochemistry (that one started out being about web fluid and turned into a thorough discussion of his orientation and the interviewer trying to flirt with him), Johnny was telling amusingly gay men who looked like the models for magazines about gay outdoorsmanship all about which of Peter's superpowers was sexiest (the wallcrawling), and whether they planned to have an open relationship (not unless it was needed for their psychological health, which Johnny wasn't ruling out because superheroing is stressful and the only reason Reed and Sue function as well as they do is that Ben is basically like an extra, nonsexy spouse).

As the wedding approached, GQ, Gay City News, and, bafflingly, Brides asked for interviews about the wedding plans. 

Aunt May handled those. The woman was a terror. Brides was told an increasingly improbable tale about a "rustic" themed wedding that would involve burlap table runners, burlap upholstery, burlap plateware, and they checked out about the time that Aunt May told them the grooms would be wearing actual burlap sacks instead of tuxedos. GQ got a nice bit about elegance and having a classy wedding, and GCN got all the really good tidbits.

"This is all starting to really stress me out," Peter confessed one day when Johnny caught him pacing on the living room ceiling. 

Johnny laid out on his back and looked up at him. Peter sometimes took a while to notice that he was pacing on the ceiling. "We could always elope."

"I am not getting married in Vegas," Peter said warningly.

"Of course not, burlap gets really itchy in hot, dry places."

Peter flashed a dirty look at him. "You're not scared at all, are you?"

Johnny shrugged. "Not really. I mean, as long as the actual getting married part happens, I don't really care about much of anything else that might go on. The whole wedding could be a disaster, but as long as Doctor Doom unleashes the mutant skunks after we're officially superhusbands, I'm good."

Peter glared at him. "If you just jinxed us..."

+----+

The wedding went beautifully. The portal to another universe opened during the reception, instead. All the cleanup was pretty smooth, it turned out the portal was the work of a counterpart of Peter's seeking help from other iterations of himself. This one was almost as old as Stark, had apparently worked mostly on his own for almost twenty years, and when he learned that he'd interrupted his younger counterpart's wedding to Johnny Storm, he'd turned faintly green and gone to yell at his own Johnny Storm for about thirty minutes in order to confirm that there wasn't some sort of unrequited love between them. Johnny got the impression that the answer hadn't been a firm no. This impression was helped along by the fact that his own counterpart had sounded really willing to have a three way with him and Peter.

"Go get your own," Johnny had told him as the portal closed up.

+----+

When they finally got to their honeymoon in Stark's private ski chalet in France, Peter made a show of dumping out his bag like it had personally offended him. "Six days," he exclaimed. "Six days for like, all of the superheroes ever to fight off Galactus and figure out where that other version of Franklin dropped everyone."

Johnny flopped into the pile of Peter's clothes. "On the other hand, that one you that was younger totally had a thing going with his MJ. And, like, nice, y'know."

Peter grinned. "I liked that one. He thought Tony Stark being an asshole was just a multiversal constant."

"Counter-Earth," Johnny said. "Starkmeals™."

"He was smart." Peter started picking through his luggage. "Oh, for fuck's sake! Deadpool snuck a bunch of stuff from other universes into my luggage. Look, this is Spider-Gwen's mask!"

"You know she was pretty pissed you kept calling her that," Johnny said.

"She killed her me. She gets teasing."

"I bet regular-Gwen wants to kill you a lot."

Peter leaned over to kiss Johnny gently, and something twitched against the back of Johnny's head. Johnny jumped up and whirled to grab it, but it was just some little robotics component, a black sphere with two sort of truncated cones attached to it. Peter looked at it, twitching and bending around the sphere in the middle, and he snatched it up. "No fuckin' way," Peter breathed. 

"What?" Johnny said.

"Hiro was working on something exactly like this the week before..." Peter turned the thing over in his fingers, poking and prodding. "The design is more advanced, but it's the same concept."

Johnny pulled the thing out of Peter's hand and put it into one of the small pouches on his bag. 

"That thing was probably just some other Spidey's."

Peter nodded. "Yeah. It's just... weird. I mean, that thing was exactly one of Hiro's Microbot concept."

"Cool." Johnny smiled. "We'll investigate later if you want. Right now, though, come and fuck your husband on a pile of clothes from other universes. Maybe wear the Spider-Gwen mask."

+----+

Daily Bugle, November 12, 2017

DOCTOR DOOM ATTACKS SPIDER-HONEYMOON, IS SOUNDLY THWARTED.

In a brazen but ill-fated attempt on the lives of two of his greatest enemies, Doctor Doom attempted to lethally interrupt the honeymoon of Johnny Storm and Peter Parker yesterday in a Tony-Stark-owned ski chalet in France. Local authorities reported that Doom was spotted fleeing the country in a high-powered gunship helicopter after his assault failed.  
"We just really wish he hadn't used mutant skunks," said Johnny Storm to representatives of the French press. "Peter predicted that exact thing a few weeks ago, and he's convince he's developed some sort of sarcastic precognition."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hi, 616 Peter! What are you doing there?
> 
> Ah, the Marvel Multiverse. There's a few constants. Tony's an ass, Peter's a dweeb, Deadpool is Deadpool.
> 
> And yes, that is an artifact from Big Hero 6 Movieverse.


End file.
